‘The things I have seen in those camps,’ said Layla. ‘Nine months after the crisis first broke out, I was showing journalists around one of the medical centres when a woman came in. She just handed over her baby, no words at all, and walked away. She had been raped by soldiers, before escaping Rakhine. Her husband had been dead for years, and there she was, pregnant. The shame of it, you know? I can still see the nurse, just holding this tiny baby, staring down in shock. Imagine it. Abandoned, as an orphan, in that camp.’

‘Poor little thing,’ said Casey.

‘But another time a different woman came into the health centre, just for a check-up,’ Layla went on. ‘She’d also been raped, but was holding her baby so close. She said, “I carried this boy for almost ten months. I had all sorts of pain and grief for him. And I gave birth to him. He is a son of the Rohingya.” ’ Layla shrugged. ‘So which woman is right? I can’t tell any more.’

‘Does it surprise you?’ asked Casey. ‘These surrogacy arrangements?’

‘Not really.’ Layla pursed her lips. ‘The Rohingya have always been seen as—’ She gestured vividly, dismissively. ‘It’s different here,’ she went on. ‘The women in this country, they’re treated like shit anyway. More than one in five Bangladeshi girls are married by the time they are fifteen, just for starters. When the Rohingya girls arrived in Bangladesh, a lot of them were married off as soon as they got here. It’s not like they had any choice. Very young girls, and old, old men, sometimes.’

‘At first, I didn’t understand why the gang didn’t just go and recruit these women,’ said Casey. ‘Just pay them a bit, make it easy. I didn’t understand why they had to go to all the trouble of kidnapping them. Hessa understood it, right from the start.’

‘It is what has happened for years with the Rohingya,’ said Layla, and Casey knew it was true.

By one calculation, 170,000 Rohingya were trafficked to Malaysia and Thailand in just three years even before the current crisis. Sold off like cattle, at $2,000 a head. A nice little business for the traffickers, coining $100 million a year. Mass graves were found in Thailand: those who wouldn’t follow the rules. Plenty more where they came from.

‘No,’ said Layla coolly. ‘These men would never go and negotiate with the Rohingya. They’d tell a few lies, and grab them. And who would stop them? No one.’

As the banqueting room doors flew open, Casey jerked to her feet. It was Raz, beaming widely. He stood there for a moment, enjoying his entrance.

How should I be? Casey had asked Miranda. I don’t know how to play this part.

Jubilant. Miranda’s smile was crooked. Ecstatic. Delirious. Don’t you know what happiness looks like, Casey?

Now Casey stood there for a second, unsure.