Misrak’s boss Patty arrives with her husband. They’re carrying a fluffy white-fabric photo album and a bouquet of white roses.

‘Please, no slips, okay?’ Misrak says, when she sees them walking towards us. ‘I told them it wasn’t necessary, but Patty was hung up. She said if my family couldn’t come, the least she could do is be here, can you believe?’

It is over in minutes. We sign our names as witnesses. We take photographs in the sun. It’s an afternoon of giddy delight, as if we were standing on a high mountain, the oxygen in our lungs clipped and clean.

Later, at Applebee’s, Abebe unbuttons the top of his kameez. ‘Coronas for everyone,’ he says, and the way he gesticulates, the great girth of him, makes me think that one day he’ll make a woman burst with joy. Not Misrak, of course, but someone else.

‘I feel bad,’ Misrak says, looking at the card that Patty and her husband had placed in the album. ‘They were so earnest. So full of good wishes, but it’s also funny, isn’t it?’ We laugh so much the stitches in our sides seem to come undone. To an outsider we might have appeared like the subjects of a Bruce Weber photograph gone downscale – no Hamptons here, but look at this dewy skin, look at this golden light.

That night, as Misrak and I lie across from each other on our mattresses, the dirty grey shag beneath us, she says, ‘They always tell us we need a man. All the old crones at home, they go on and on about how much we need a man. Even my lovely liberal father says it. He says it will make life acceptable. But what I need is America. And if a fake husband will get me a Green Card so I can stay, then fuck it, I’ll take him.’

Five years later Misrak met Jake at a library meeting, a man of such checked-shirt regularity, it seemed unthinkable that they could love each other. But within weeks they fitted parts of themselves into each other’s voids, voids they didn’t know they had. There was a speedy divorce from Abebe, who laughed loudly when he heard the news. ‘My wife is in love with an American man!’ he chortled. ‘And I am so happy.’ There was another trip to the courthouse – subdued, nervy. I yawned through the whole thing. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Misrak said, crushing me against her. ‘I’m not going to change a bit.’