‘Well, I don’t care if I haven’t been invited. Uncle Aziz is an old hypocrite, anyway. And I’m not bringing Papa back to Dhaka; I told you already, he’s not going back. He’s going to spend his retirement here, with Verity, if she forgives him. If he goes back at all, it’ll be to finalize your separation. You’ll finally be a free woman,’ she added, hoping her mother might have come round to this idea as being a good thing. ‘You’ll get your own settlement, your own income, you could do whatever you want, go travel-ling, anything …’

Henna exploded at Shona. ‘You shorer bacha kuttar bacha barami,’ she shrieked, the expletives falling freely from her lips. ‘I ask you to do one thing for me in your sorry little life, and you refuse! You’ve ruined your life, and now you want to ruin mine. You ran out on your husband for some Irish tramp you met last week, and you’ve raised a faggot and an overdosing drug-abuser. You were a bad wife, a bad mother, and now you’re a bad daughter, too. I disown you Shona! I have no family anymore!’

‘You haven’t had a family for years,’ Shona screamed back. ‘Don’t you DARE tell me what it is to be a bad mother. You never even knew I was there. You just used me like some commodity, some bauble to brandish, someone to boast about to your friends. You were never there for me, you were never there for my boys. I had twin sons in a foreign country and I had no one to turn to for help, but you didn’t care. You didn’t even come to see them until they were at school. They love you, you know - they think you’re bloody fantastic. But you don’t even know the first thing about them - you don’t know their first names, do you? Or their birthday, do you? Do you, Amma?’ She paused for air, breathing heavily. ‘So, you’re disowning me? That’s a bloody joke - you disowned us all years ago, long, long before I married Parvez and Papa came to England. And you know what? You can’t have us back now. Enjoy what you’ve got, Mamma, it’s all you’ll get.’ Shona hung up, slamming the phone down violently. She pulled up her knees and held them tight, rocking on the bed and shaking with fury.