Ricky-Rashid had an unconscious Dickensian belief that the name unveiled the soul; no man named Uriah Heep would ever be a romantic hero, no boy named Twist could expect a straightforward life. And in Ricky-Rashid’s book, that by which we call a rose would certainly not smell as sweet if it were called by a less fragrant name. Which is why he had so often longed to doff ‘Rashid’, his Indian name, the name that bound him to his duty, and to become Ricky once more. Ricky, the English gentleman and scholar, Ricky the Lionhearted, the powerful, for whom all the limitless Opportunities and giddy potential of life was waiting. But he had defaulted, for many years, to being dull, limited Just Rashid - Rashid, meaning he who followed the right and narrow course, just another Indian accountant with a plump wife and pedestrian life. In Ricky-Rashid’s experience, names meant something; after all, his child-bride Henna had lived up to her name in being a beautiful flower which had seemed fragrant in fresh youth, but whose touch had left him a marked man. He had named Shona Kiran to be his golden one, his little ray of sunshine, and so she had shone for him obediently in her childhood, creating the only bright spells in his dark, wooden life.

Ricky-Rashid realized that what had defined his life with these two women was their need to lie to him -reassuringly on Shona’s part, brutally on Henna’s, but always to lie. Lies had penned him in, and wrapped him in tangled webs he couldn’t unravel. What he had always longed for was a life lived in truth, and all that was decent and true was what Verity Trueman represented. He felt he knew everything about her just by knowing her name. Ricky-Rashid knew at that moment that Fate had decided to be kind. He saw himself leading a different sort of life with a different sort of woman - a life beautiful in its frankness and openness. He would share everything with Verity, he would tell her everything she asked. But of course, she would never ask about his other wife, or his grown-up daughter, because she would never know that they existed.