‘But how could you read it upside down?5 he asked. Something was very wrong, very wrong indeed. Why was she holding the book the wrong way round? Henna could surely not be as short-sighted as all that.

Aware that instant distraction was necessary, Henna smiled as meltingly as the movie stars she’d learned from and, holding out her slender hand to Ricky-Rashid, she said, ‘You can kiss me again if you like.5 When Ricky-Rashid didn’t move, she moved towards him instead, and he couldn’t stop himself kissing her and pulling her nubile body into his arms, while the urgent physical sensation fought with his racing mind. Liquorice again, the taste of liquorice, the supple too-slender too-girlish body, the comment about the beatings, the thickly accented Simply Wonderful, the upside-down book, and again, the unavoidable, intoxicating taste of liquorice sweets … childhood sweets.

Controlling himself and pushing her away, Ricky-Rashid held the breathless Henna at arm’s length as he looked at her closely, her lipstick and powder rubbed off by their embrace, her enormous eyes ludicrously over-made up by comparison. ‘How old are you, Henna?’ he asked quietly.

On his wedding night, Ricky-Rashid slept alone, tormented by the discovery, coaxed from Henna with gentle words, bribes, promises and yet more sweets, that his educated seventeen-year-old bride was actually an illiterate shopkeeper’s daughter, a thirteen-year-old child who had married him as a way to skip school and fulfil a schoolgirl fantasy of becoming an actress. Disturbed by the memory of her body, Ricky-Rashid was disgusted by himself for having wanted her so much - a child, she was just a child, and he had almost … it didn’t bear thinking about. He was no English gentleman, he was practically a pervert.

It was the night that every one of Ricky-Rashid’s hopes and dreams of a life lived in truth and sincerity, of an idyllic western-style marriage, was ground into a red, muddy sludge like the powder from which Henna took her name. She had stained him and blotted all his future aspirations, and he simply couldn’t wash away the marks. He was forced to be complicit in the lie - she would have to remain his wife or everyone would know how he and his family had been tricked and shamed. She would have to be educated privately at his parents’ house, and remain out of society until such time when she would no longer give herself away.