He said she could choose something for herself, so she did. She picked out an oblong plastic model of the Kaaba in Mecca, and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, made in China. It was glamorous yet pious, raining shiny pink and purple plastic balls over Islam’s most holy places, when you shook it.

What she didn’t tell him about was the amulet of her father’s that she had carried with her from Pakistan. A symbol carved in white stone. A very ancient stone, her father thought. It fitted into the palm of her hand. Discreet. Haram, her aunt said. But to Mariam, its V-shape was birds, flying home along the valley.

TRANSLATOR: Auntie is right, such things are forbidden in Islam.

JUDGE: My specific question is, was it Eva Harcourt-Vane who offered Mariam Maher refuge in the islands? Did Mariam approach Eva, out of the blue as it were?

TRANSLATOR: Blue? [Pause as translator speaks to witness on screen]

MARIAM: Yes, yes. Blue.

The first time they went travelling in the van, she was in shock. Not just because of all the ghostly white faces. Nor because they were driving outside London. But because of the p—g farms which stretched in a great muddy patch outwards from the highway. The p—gs themselves were impossible to mistake, lolling naked and pink outside their huts, snouts in the air.

Her silence extended as far as the turning off the motorway (they were on the way to Southampton). She asked the question which was pressing on her brain – Do they really eat it? He didn’t answer at first. Then he said, as he fiddled with the van’s radio: They say we share forty per cent of our DNA with onions. We Muslims? she asked. He laughed at that: No, we humans.

TRANSLATOR: He spends time educating her.

JUDGE: Please could you translate, and not merely summarise what the witness is saying?

TRANSLATOR: Excuse me but I have told you already, she is talking too much. I am powerless to stop her.