Don’t be stupid, replied Shona. I don’t resent you. Why would you say that? How could you feel how I felt? And I know everything you’ve done for us; we have a good life, a beautiful house, a nice car that I still haven’t learned to drive. I don’t resent you for not suffering like me; but why couldn’t you have changed with me, Parvez? Why couldn’t you have grown up, too? I can’t explain what happened to us; all I know is that slowly, gradually, every single little thing you said or did just felt wrong, as though you could never do anything right again. And so I snap and criticize and nag, until you throw accusations at me, saying things like, ‘You resent me,’ and then you begin to resent me yourself, for being what I’ve become. So maybe it is all my fault; I didn’t just make the boys, you know. I made us, too. I sought you out in Pakistan, I looked for you and made you mine. I was responsible for our beginning; maybe it only makes sense that I should be responsible for our end.

Sitting on the floor, surrounded by photos of her past, betrayed and exposed by the images of her legion former selves, Shona hugged her knees and began to cry quietly to herself. Patrick-Bob, who had turned out to be a she rather than a he on closer inspection, scuffled into the living room and nuzzled against her. Pulling herself together, Shona gathered all the photos before the dog could put muddy paw prints on them, and put them back in the envelope, back in the box, and put the box back in the attic.

As she walked into the kitchen to get Patrick-Bob’s water, she saw that she had left the french windows to the garden open, and that tiny paw prints had made a merry, muddy dance all over the kitchen tiles. Sighing, but at once relieved for this new diversion, Shona cleaned the kitchen floor until it sparkled, and made dinner for Parvez. When he came back, she was unreasonably cross with him for the accurate charges that his photographically captured self had made in her imagination, and answered all his attempts at conversation with monosyllables, scraping her plate clean because she knew the sound annoyed him.

‘I picked up that book you said you needed, Shona,’ Parvez said, when he had finished eating.

‘Right, thanks,’ said Shona disinterestedly, continuing to scrape her plate, even though she didn’t know which book he was talking about.

Parvez sighed, and battled on, ’The Iliad. Don’t you remember? You said you needed a copy of The Iliad, you said you needed it for school.’

‘Yes, I did. Thanks,’ Shona repeated, finally putting down her jarring cutlery.