‘About Marvi and me. You know we’d all arranged to meet for supper when you got home at nine? I let myself in with your key to wait for you. I fell asleep on the sofa with the TV on and assumed you were back early when the bell rang at seven. It was Marvi: she arrived much earlier than expected, said she’s made a mistake about the time and thought it was eight. I was left alone with her for two hours. She insisted on opening the bottle of champagne she’d brought with her. She sat beside me and kissed me and touched me till I was on fire. When you came back early from your evening class, I heard the bell ring twice, and I pushed her away, hard, so she tripped and twisted her wrist. I was helping her up when you came in and we said she’d fallen.’

Mehran doesn’t really understand the story, the timings, the blurred detail. It’s true, Marco was helping Marvi up from the floor when he had come in, but Marvi trips and falls often. He knows Marvi will tell him her own version of events, say that Marco made advances to her, attacked her when she refused him.

‘It hardly matters. What you don’t understand, Marco, is that I’m the one who has to live with her complaints.’

Marco has reached South Kensington, where he has to change trains for Heathrow. Mehran doesn’t remember later if he had planned to go all the way to the airport, but says goodbye to Marco on the Piccadilly Line platform. When Marco puts out his arms to embrace him, Mehran just pats his shoulder, moves away with a few abrupt words, doesn’t look back.

Mehran walks out on Marvi in anger a few weeks after Marco’s visit. Not because Marvi has found someone else; Mehran hasn’t, either. Not because of her drugs and her drinking (though Mehran found six empty bottles of vodka in her kitchen after four days of being away from her at a conference in Leyden). But because she’s lied to him too often. Because it’s all dead.

After some months of silence Marco makes a stoned late-night call. He asks about Marvi. Mehran is willing to forget, but Marco is obviously embarrassed and trying to put things right.

‘You’re both wonderful people. But so, so wrong for each other …’

‘It’s over, Marco.’

Mehran doesn’t want to explain. That’s all he says.

1992