Parvez felt the niggle of doubt that he had dismissed at the airport come creeping back. He couldn’t go crawling back to Pakistan with his tail between his legs; he had to make this work. He looked helplessly at his cousin for just a moment before pulling himself together and saying firmly, ‘A flat, then. We’ll get our own flat. I’ll work with you and leave Shona free to manage our home and do whatever else she wants, continue her studies maybe.’ He added with a touch of pride, ‘My wife is a very intelligent woman, a college girl, you know. Just finished her final exams. She could’ve gone to university here in England, but she chose Karachi, just to be near me.’

‘So she’s not that Bloody bright,’ said Bhai Hassan crushingly. ‘Besides, how do you think a college girl will manage your home? I’ll bet she can’t even cook. I know the sort, had servants all their lives and can’t make a Bloody cup of cha without someone else boiling the water and pouring the milk.’

Parvez received this disquieting insight with a nonchalant shrug; it was probably true that Shona couldn’t cook, or sew, or make a cup of tea. So what? He hadn’t fallen in love for her domestic skills. Besides, he knew how to cook from his time in the family restaurant; maybe he could teach her.

‘So can we stay with you? Just for a bit?’ he asked, with a pleading smile and the big, persuasive puppy-dog eyes that had earned him his pet name from Shona.

It was Bhai Hassan’s turn to shrug. His good-looking young cousin had a lot of charm, he’d give him that. He’d be a definite front-of-house asset with the moneyed ladies of Tooting, especially with his new plans to expand the sweet shop to a tea house. Sod the bloody family - apart from Parvez, they never wrote to him anyway, except to ask for money.

‘It doesn’t look like I have much choice,’ he said with resignation, pouring his tortured rose-petal sludge into a hot pan to melt, the sweet scent rising mournfully from the steam and hanging in the air like a mistreated spirit. Parvez bounded across the table to hug him, but Bhai Hassan smacked his hands away in an attempt to hold on to his elder cousin authority. ‘Arré! Careful, this stove is hot! So when can you start work. Tomorrow?’

‘In three days’ time, if that’s OK,’ Parvez said sweetly, with the carefree innocence of someone about to spend well beyond his means. ‘First, my wife and I have plans for our honeymoon.’