It cuts through everything. He gets up and walks slowly. He runs the stick across the railings and I can feel the rhythm of it in my fingers. His mouth is stained red at the sides with juice. It makes him look like he’s smiling, but he isn’t. He lets go of the railings and walks around me as if I don’t exist. His scarf is dragging on the ground now. She waits until he’s right in front of her, then bends over, pulls the scarf away and throws it back into his face. Right back. Like a whip. I look away. I imagine him shutting his eyes against the slap of the tassels.

‘Put. It. Round. Your. Fuckin’. Neck.’

They head down the hill towards the pavilion and I can’t help thinking about the lectures from Dadi. So many. They all merged into one after a while. The honour of raising righteous daughters. The honour that Baba deserves.

‘These girls here love dunyah more than honour,’ she said one dinnertime when Amina was waiting to escape, to go out to the cinema with friends. ‘They think of their own desires and nothing else. They show everything they have, they give for free to anybody and because of that what are they worth?’

‘Nothing,’ Amina said, and I looked at her to see if she was being serious or just playing along. I couldn’t tell.

Breathe out and send my breath over the railings. I can still hear the pram wheels on the gravel. That poor boy. He didn’t seem fazed. He’s probably been through worse. I try to think through the argument with Ewan, the latest one, to understand how I got from there to here. I left the newspaper open at the jobs page. That was the first mistake. He was looking at it in the kitchen first thing when I came out of the bedroom. Almost dressed for the commute, pushing the wide end of his yellow tie through the loop, pulling it tight. I brushed past him and picked the kettle up to fill it, turned the tap off, put the kettle back on its stand, flipped the on switch.

‘So you want to be a care assistant now?’

‘What?’

‘A care assistant.’

He picked up the paper and shoved it under my nose. I’d circled the advert in a moment of boredom the day before. A moment when the thought of another shift in the shop was so depressing anything new seemed possible.

I shrugged. It was too early. I wanted to say Let me get a cup of coffee, Ewan, let me do that at least.

‘You’ve never worked in care.’