In the same part of the park, but closer to the stage, Ricky laid out a blanket for Verity and Candida. ‘Thank you, darling,’ Verity said, unpacking a little picnic basket. She pulled out a couple of large thermos flasks, looking apologetically at Candida. ‘I know you prefer white wine, darling, but I thought it might be a bit too nippy for that. I’ve done us some coffee and hot chocolate.’

‘That’s lovely, Mummy, thank you,’ said Candida distractedly, looking at her phone. ‘Sharif says they’re a bit delayed. I’m going to go and see if I can go backstage to wish them luck.’ She did up the laces on her tennis shoes, and ran down towards the stage.

Verity and Ricky were left alone on the blanket. ‘When are we meeting the others?’ she asked Ricky.

‘They should all be here now, but we’d never find them. Omar gave me directions to some pub on the edge of the park, we’re to meet there after Sharif’s band have played their piece,’ Ricky said, pouring out two cups of coffee and crumbling brown sugar into them.

‘I’m really looking forward to seeing Shona again; she’s such a lovely woman. Such a credit to you,’ Verity said, a little hesitantly.

Ricky looked at her in wonder and, taking her hand, reverently kissed it and then turned it over to kiss the palm. ‘What did I ever do to deserve you?’ he said humbly. ‘All that time I wasted away from you, running back for weekends in Bangladesh, just to keep up a stupid pretence.’

‘It’s all in the past, Ricky,’ Verity said, ‘and it didn’t matter that you went to Bangladesh occasionally; you did have to see your mum, after all. What mattered most, is that you came back.’

That girl at the drinks stall liked you, son,’ said Parvez with some of his old bonhomie, sipping his not quite cold beer. ‘I could tell.’

‘Abbu, please stop doing this,’ said Omar, embarrassed, before riposting shrewdly, ‘besides, I think it was you she liked - she must have a thing for stylish older men.’ He was only half joking; his father looked rather dashing that day, in his dark jeans and expensive blue sweater. Omar suspected that his Abbu was unconsciously reverting to the dandy he’d been before he’d married his mother.

‘OK, enough,’ winced Parvez with discomfort at the compliment, marring his good looks with a frown. ‘I’ll stop going on. But you know I only do it because I worry about you; you’ve chosen a hard path. You were already an ethnic minority, now you’re a sexual minority in an ethnic minority.’

‘Abbu, I didn’t choose anything. It’s just what I am. And there’s nothing so hard or difficult about it any more - it’s not like it was when you came to England.’