Verity sat down heavily beside him on the sofa, her face messy with sudden unhappiness. She nursed her hot coffee for a moment, and then said quietly, with a gentle hiccup, ‘Don’t you want people to know I’m your wife?’

‘Darling, of course I do!’ said Ricky. ‘We haven’t done anything in secret - we had an enormous wedding in your parents’ village and announced it to the world.’ Lightening the mood had never been his strong point, but he joked feebly, ‘We’ll get the wedding shots back from the photographer soon, in case you don’t remember.’

Verity hiccupped sadly again, ‘I don’t mean the people at the wedding. I mean your people. Your family. Why haven’t I met your brother, or your sister-in-law, or your mum? Or any of the people from Bangladesh that you see when you’re here? Don’t you want them to know that you married an English girl?’

Ricky paused for a moment, wondering what sister-in-law she could be talking about. Then he remembered that he had once let slip to Verity about Henna’s presence in the house back in Bangladesh, and had passed her off as Aziz’s wife, which didn’t seem quite like lying. Buying a bit of time, he reached over to his jacket and pulled out some of the dark bitter mints that Verity liked; he had bought them at the airport while waiting for his plane home. Setting them on the table between their coffee cups, he took Verity’s hand firmly. ‘Darling, I meant what I said before. You’re my family. Those other people mean very little to me, and I mean very little to them. Even my own Ammie makes it very clear that she prefers not to have me around, she would rather have Aziz and her daughter-in-law, and so that’s what she’s got.’ So far, so true. He took a surreptitious breath and, looking frankly into Verity’s eyes, prepared to lie to reassure her. ‘And of course they all know about you. It’s me they disapprove of, not you. They didn’t like me before, for not managing the farms and being a dutiful son and heir. And now I’ve gone and married an English girl in an English church, hardly the act of a good Muslim.’

Verity sniffed, not quite appeased, and said, ‘I just don’t want to be excluded from your world. I’ve been left out enough in my life as it is.’