She found, when she passed English women in the streets, close enough to touch, or saw them from afar when she was driving with her husband, that she did not feel the horror she had expected. It was true that their hair was often unbrushed, or brashly multicoloured; that their bottoms and breasts were visible through their clothing. But after the day she saw a woman of her own age wearing a transparent green raincoat, her hair dyed a light aubergine purple, her eyes dark and yet her lips unpainted, Mariam began to look forward to glimpsing more of these surprising creatures. She knew that to them she was a blank, a black sheet, a nothing that their eyes passed over as quickly and fearfully as if she was naked. Driving out of London, along smooth black roads and into the provinces, her glance travelled downwards, from their heads to the skin exposed on their arms and chests. She watched the breeze pass over the plucked and puckered skin of these women’s legs, and as her husband parked the van at their destination, and it was time to pull a cloak over her own legs in their cotton trousers, Mariam felt a pang of pity for Am. She knew what Ma and Ri would say. They would say that she was becoming corrupted—

TRANSLATOR: She is becoming corrupted by her exposure to England.

—by her exposure to England.

JUDGE: How quickly can this situation be rectified?

SOLICITOR: By tomorrow at the earliest—

He had complained about her skin, the first time she took off her headscarf. There was a line where the make-up ended, and her real, dark skin began. For her wedding photos she had been made-up even paler. Mariam minded that he minded. She had not expected this cool feeling from the man she married. She was nineteen years old now, and aware of the potential for loving passion.

TRANSLATOR: He is a modern husband.

JUDGE: I’m going to need this testimony as a full transcript in word-for-word translation.

She waited for a baby, but no baby came.

SOLICITOR: There’s a translator in Berwick but he won’t make the evening flight from Edinburgh today and unfortunately the last ferry leaves before—

JUDGE: What a travesty.

Aliya got married, to a teacher from Mirpur Khas. She posted Mariam the wedding photos: the pale make-up, the glittery gold, the red silk. Mariam saw the faces of her cousins and aunts. There was her Cousin Fatima, with a new baby; it lay, immobile in her arms, bundled in a scarf. Fatima’s face was radiant with happiness, like a kid with a sweet. The happiness of home cut Mariam like a knife.