Sharif could hear his mother talking, but it sounded like she was underwater; he could see her and his father’s relieved faces, overhanging him like twin moons swimming over the clouds of his sheets. Amma-Abbu-Amma; the push-me-pull-you of his childhood, but this time they were facing the same direction. This time, for the first time, he was lying in the bed between them. He heard a soft pattering, the step of someone running so lightly it was like dancing. The white curtains around his bed were pushed back with a decisive gesture, and there, standing at the foot of his bed, was an angel in a sky-blue dress, a radiant halo of lustrous hair around her head, and a hand stretched out to him, in forgiveness, and understanding. ‘You saw the girl who’d make your dreams come true,’ he thought, his own weak hand stretching out to meet hers.

The Mother and Child Reunion

IN THE EARLY hours of the morning, the phone began ringing in Shona’s Clapham flat. She swore to herself, and put her head under her pillow to drown out the din. ‘Shona, are you there?’ the familiar, insistent voice of her mother called out. ’Arré, so pick up!’ She began the sing-song chant that grated on Shona more than nails across an old-fashioned blackboard: Tick up, pick up, pick up … Pick up! pick up!!’ Shona groaned, and reaching across to the bedside table, obeyed.

‘Ouf, Amma, please stop calling at this time. You know it’s three in the morning here. Why can’t you wait like a normal person?’

‘Teh, always so slow, Shona,’ her mother said, before adding coyly, and rather bitchily, ‘Why so slow? Do you have company?’

’Why are you calling, Amma?’

‘Why do you think I’m calling, you stupid girl. It’s your uncle’s wedding next week. When are you bringing your father back to Dhaka?’

‘I didn’t know the wedding was next week,’ said Shona, surprised. ‘I guess I haven’t been invited.’

Henna sighed. Why was she cursed with a daughter as slow as her father? ‘Of course you haven’t been invited, dear. I don’t want to offend you, but adulterous little harlots who leave their Pakistani husbands and then shout about it to the world don’t get invited to respectable people’s weddings. If you had half a brain in your head, you’d have done whatever you wanted, but just kept quiet about it. People don’t mind other people misbehaving, they just prefer not to know about it. Do you remember, when you were little, Shona? For New Year’s Eve we always went to the respectable parties that didn’t serve alcohol, but that didn’t mean we didn’t drink, we just brought our own in secretly and spiked our punch.’ Henna giggled slyly at the memory of tiny little whisky bottles tied to the underside of her arms beneath her voluminous long-sleeved shalwars.