How did Mariam come to be married? It happened like this. Her father was a Sheedi – ‘one of the original Muslims’, he liked to say (the first muezzin of Islam was an Ethiopian); ‘a caste of African-Pakistani labourers’, said the others. He was clever, got an education, and entered the army. At the time, Pakistan’s only Sheedi private. As a result, he made a good marriage, with a fair-skinned, narrow-nosed mixed Sheedi-Sindhi girl with long straight hair from Thatta. Mariam, however, came out just like her father, as her aunt kept repeating. While Mariam’s father was alive, what her aunt thought meant nothing. But when he died, Mariam’s chances would have been severely jeopardised, after all, had not a soft-hearted general from Lahore stepped in – army largesse – to raise a good dowry.

JUDGE: [To Solicitor] Am I correct in thinking that it was the witness who was the catalyst for Eva Harcourt-Vane setting up the women’s refuge on the island of Papa Astrid?

SOLICITOR: That’s right. The financial side is contained in her accountant’s witness statement.

JUDGE: Are we to talk to the accountant?

SOLICITOR: Sigrid Henderson is due to give evidence later this week.

In Mirpur Khas, Sindh, Mariam’s aunt narrowed things down: three respectable suitors. She frowned as she handed the three photographs across the table to her niece.

Mariam, too, frowned as she laid these men out, shoulder to shoulder. Then she divided herself in three – Ma, Ri, Am – and sat back to survey her three-way prospects.

Ma was to be married to the bureaucrat from Hyderabad, who was chubby with a pleasant smile. But Mariam wished to escape her native state, so that ruled him out.

Ri chose the Sindhi cloth merchant who had settled in Lahore – but though he was rich, he had a wife already, and two young children. Could she live as a second wife under one roof with the first? No, she could not. All her romance film watching had taught her that.

So a lot came down to Am, who was partnered with the youngest. His age was given as thirty. In the photo he was wearing a baggy Western suit.

TRANSLATOR: Her parents are dead. She lives with her aunt. You can see she is dark. But she is pretty. She will find a good husband, if she is modest enough. But in this case she makes the choice herself. It is her African blood. Very bold. Also, she talks to herself. A bit too much wordy woman.

While he didn’t look reliable, he at least looked modern in outlook. But that wasn’t it. He had one clear advantage over the rest. He lived in England.

His was the photograph which she pushed back across the table to her aunt.

‘He lives in England,’ said her aunt, as though this was a death sentence – rather than the passport to freedom that Mariam knew it was.

TRANSLATOR: A rather too-independent lady.