They had all heard Mariam’s voice, sweet and melancholy and lilting, drifting down the passage as she took a bath, or up the stairs as she cooked in the kitchen. They weren’t to know it was lullabies she was singing; nor that she told her lentil long stories in Sindhi, as she walked about the house, or took her daily stroll outside to see the sea: stories of its grandfather, who had fought so bravely against the Indians, high up in the mountains where the ibex are, and who, had he been alive, would have taken her baby and its mother to see the red fort on the river, which the Mughals built and where he was once stationed; stories of Britain, too, eloquent descriptions in Sindhi or Urdu, of the strange things to be found there, of the flight into the islands – the plane which was so tiny, it felt like flying in a rickshaw – the jagged coastline, the dark endless sea. Nakedness, she told her baby, I saw the country naked. The sky, she said, about to swallow me up. She said that in English, just to show off how good she was getting.

‘Are you OK?’ Nina touched her shoulder and Mariam moaned. ‘Are you hurt?’

Mariam moaned. ‘My baby.’

‘Oh God, are you—? Oh my God. Let’s get you in the car. I’ll take you in.’

But the pain stopped suddenly as they arrived at hospital. It was as if a bubble inside her had been pricked; and when Nina opened the car door for her, and Mariam stood up, a warm liquid rushed out, down her legs.

After that, Mariam was wheeled from room to room, on her back on a trolley, her eyes half-closed against the ceiling lights. She held Nina’s hand. Sometimes it was a man looking down on her and sometimes a woman. To her own surprise she felt no objection as they stripped her. Little lentil, little lentil. Their gentleness soothed her. She saw the face of Nina appear and disappear. Thank you, Mariam said, over and over again. Thank you. Meherbani. Thank you. Shukriya.

They pricked her arm with liquids, and the liquids made her disappear. She dreamt sweet dreams of home. Of Aliya, Faiz, and Fatima.

When she woke, her baby lentil had gone.

Nina brought Mariam home to Eva’s house the following afternoon, alone without her lentil, her body flat.

‘Thank you so much, Nina,’ Eva said quietly to Nina; clearly trying to heal years of misunderstanding in one greeting. Nina shrugged. ‘Poor thing.’ However much she liked Mariam she wasn’t ready for a heart-to-heart with Eva.