Tomorrow, she need not show up at the museum, even though she said that she would. She should have told Bryan that she was engaged to be married, mentioned it casually. What did he expect from her? Europeans had different rules, reduced, abrupt customs. If Fareed knew about this … her secret thoughts like snakes … Perhaps she was like her father, a traitor. Her mother said that her father was devious. Sometimes Shadia was devious. With Fareed in the car, she would deliberately say, ‘I need to stop at the grocer, we need things at home.’ At the grocer he would pay for all her shopping and she would say, ‘No, you shouldn’t do that, no, you are too generous, you are embarrassing me.’ With the money she saved, she would buy a blouse for her mother, nail varnish for her mother, a magazine, imported apples.

It was strange to leave her desk, lock her room and go out on a Saturday. In the hall, the telephone rang. It was Fareed. If he knew where she was going now … Guilt was like a hard-boiled egg stuck in her chest. A large, cold egg.

‘Shadia, I want you to buy some of the fixtures for the bathrooms. Taps and towel hangers. I’m going to send you a list of what I want exactly and the money …’

‘I can’t, I can’t.’

‘What do you mean you can’t? If you go into any large department store …’

‘I can’t. I wouldn’t know where to put these things, how to send them.’

There was a rustle on the line and she could hear someone whispering, Fareed distracted a little. He would be at work at this time of day, glass bottles filling up with clear effervescence, ‘7Up’ written in English and Arabic, white against the dark green.

‘You can get good things, things that aren’t available here. Gold would be good. It would match …’

Gold. Gold toilet seats!

‘People are going to burn in Hell for eating out of gold dishes; you want to sit on gold!’

He laughed. He was used to getting his own way, not easily threatened, ‘Are you joking with me?’

‘No.’

In a quieter voice, ‘This call is costing …’

She knew, she knew. He shouldn’t have let her go away. She was not coping with the whole thing, she was not handling the stress. Like the Nigerian student.

‘Shadia, gold-coloured, not gold. It’s smart.’

‘Allah is going to punish us for this; it’s not right …’

‘Since when have you become so religious!’ Bryan was waiting for her on the steps of the museum, familiar-looking against the strange grey of the city, streets where cars had their headlamps on in the middle of the afternoon. He wore a different shirt, a navy-blue jacket. He said, not looking at her, ‘Ah was beginning to think you wouldnae turn up.’