‘The blood pressure’s only down a tiny bit,’ she replied chirpily. ‘He’s still doing most of his own breathing. The heartbeat’s strong. Now why don’t you try to get some sleep?’

‘I’d rather be with him.’

‘OK, love, I’ll be behind the door if you need me.’

Patrick sat on a plastic chair beside her. She turned to him. ‘You’ve told me your story. And you kept your word, you didn’t pursue your question.’

‘It’s not important now,’ he said.

‘It’s become important to me. I think it may be relevant too.’ She spoke quietly, her words covered by the hospital whirr. She looked back at her father. ‘It’s the one thing I never told him. The only secret between us. So if I tell you now, in this place, perhaps he too will hear my words. Or perhaps he won’t. That will be for God to decide.’

‘Sara,’ said Patrick quietly, ‘that’s not rational. He’s unconscious.’

‘On this night I don’t like the word “rational”. Nor the word “unconscious”. What is “rational” about him lying there and you and me watching him? What control do you think reason – or even medicine – have? How do we know what’s happening inside his head, his mind? I told you what the surgeon said. The doctors too can only wait. So, through my God, this is where I can deliver myself to the judgement of a greater being.’

He stayed silent, numbed by the clarity of her words and the softness of their delivery.

‘Let me go back to my beginning. Or should I say the time of my fall?’ He watched her gazing into her father’s eyes, and sensed a horror returning. ‘I first met Kareem eighteen years ago. 2001. Do you remember that summer? The world, our country at least, was becoming a better, happier place…’

Chapter 21

21

2001

She’d just turned eighteen, A-levels were over and her cousin Salman was marrying a girl called Nusrat. At a distracted moment during the mehndi, where she was among the giggling girls hennaing the bride, she glanced at the circle of young men – Salman’s university friends – jigging away, blasting out tracks from Panjabi MC’s Legalised.

He stood aloof, part of them but not taking part, neither dancing nor singing, tall, slim, a sheen of jet hair settling on the nape of his neck. He seemed older than the others, graver, more intense. His brown eyes, dark as the thickest forest, were so fiercely locked on her that he might have been piercing into her very soul. She stared back, her mouth ajar, eyes wide open. Boiling with embarrassment, she felt her face reddening and imagined mascara melting down her cheeks.