‘I wish I knew. Amma was very persuasive, but managed to avoid giving me a reason altogether. And she went on so much that it just seemed easier to say yes.’ She turned briefly to look at Dermot’s set profile. ‘Go on, tell me I’m a sucker. That’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I wouldn’t presume to tell you that you’re a sucker; besides, it would be pointless, seeing as you’ve already worked it out for yourself,’ Dermot said with a smile. ‘But seriously, you’re over forty years old. You really don’t need to do everything your mother says, especially without question. Don’t go if you don’t want to.’ He hesitated before adding, ‘Besides, I’d miss you.’

Shona looked at Dermot gratefully for much too long, before his warning look reminded her that she was still driving, and she turned her attention back to the mercifully quiet road in a flustered panic. ‘Darling, the car’s struggling a bit up the hill,’ Dermot said quietly. Shona, who hadn’t even noticed the fraught engine, pushed the car back into third gear.

’Sorry,’ she muttered. She’d never stop her mother from controlling her, and she was never going to pass her bloody driving test either.

In the haven of Dermot’s flat, away from prying eyes and accidental encounters, Shona lay on the sofa with her feet raised onto Dermot’s lap. Tell me about your mother,’ Dermot said. ‘You never talk about her.’

Shona hesitated. Ever since she had told Dermot about her father’s secret life, she had avoided speaking about her family altogether. She had felt comforted telling him at the time, in the same perverse way that she had felt comforted when she had made love to Parvez; it was the comfort of laying oneself bare, of giving someone else her disquiet and her troubles, expelling her demons from her flesh. But in both cases, she had felt guilty afterwards; in the first instance, she had betrayed her father for her own comfort, in the second, she had betrayed her lover.