‘I had no idea it was so complicated a business,’ said Parvez, pleased that at least one of Bhai Hassan’s dire predictions had been proved wrong. He sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes.

‘Papa used to make tea like this at home. He never let the servants make it because they used to stew the tea and put in canned evaporated milk.’

Parvez smiled and pulled Shona on to his lap, kissing the tip of her nose. ‘Goldie, can I be honest with you? I’m really not that bothered about tea right now.’

‘Neither am I,’ answered Shona, feeling the same tingle up her spine that she had felt the day she first learned to fly a kite, and the same electric shock she had felt the first time they had shaken hands at the Karachi Tennis Club after their long separation. She realized with slight trepidation and high anticipation that her anomalous time as a married virgin was about to come to an end. As she lay back on their plump, white pillows, Shona was aware of a gentle fragrant fluttering, raining over her. She opened her eyes to see Parvez scattering pale pink rose petals rescued from Bhai Hassan’s kitchen across their bed. She sighed blissfully and pulled Parvez down towards her.

That afternoon, and evening, and night, and morning, Shona and Parvez were to discover that they had something further in common besides a silly sense of humour and a fondness for nicknames. The urgent physical attraction that they had mistaken for love was the forerunner of an intense sexual compatibility that was to keep them together for twenty years. Any arguments, disappointments and frustrations were put aside, resolved, absolved in the bedroom, crushed with the salty-sweetness of their lovemaking, and melted away in the early hours of the morning, evaporating like discharged ghosts with the sticky heat of their bodies. These bodies were instantly, instinctively comfortable with each other, hand fitting hand, mouth fitting mouth, curve fitting hollow. And as they grew older, their bodies, so finely attuned to each other, so used to sharing the same bed, were to dissolve into each other, her contours into his planes, arms and legs that knotted together like tree roots, so that even in their sleep they were in an embrace.

The Relative Cost of Gold