‘I don’t believe this is the real you,’ she said at last. ‘Not the person I’ve been spending all this time with.’

He took time to answer. ‘Look at me, Sara. You are beautiful. I have never felt for anyone what I have felt – what I feel – for you. Such a wanting. Such desire.’

‘And I’ve allowed you to have it.’ Tears threatened again and she wiped one angrily away.

‘No, we have had each other. And we must continue to. It is our fate.’

‘Not like this. Not after what you did.’

‘You must not regret it. It was a wonderful thing that we were joined.’

His perception was so one-sided that part of her wanted him to know the truth. But what was the point in trying to reverse or recapture what might have been? Now it was no more than a wrongly imagined dream. She gathered her bag and moved her left hand towards the door lever. He grabbed both her hands with his.

‘Do not leave. We have to be together now. It is our destiny. It is God’s will.’

‘Don’t give me your pretence of God, Kareem.’ For the first time, her tone changed – not a shout but a low hiss. ‘I thought your God says sex is prohibited outside marriage. What God’s will do you dare to claim after what you’ve done to me?’

She tried to free her hands but he tightened his grip and began to twist. ‘Let me go.’

‘I will never release you.’

‘Let me go.’ This time she shouted. A mother with a pram was walking past the car. She beat her face against the door, screaming. He crunched and turned the skin of her wrist ever tighter. She screamed again, catching the woman’s eye. Kareem saw it. He let go. She opened the door and rushed towards the pram.

‘Are you all right, love?’

‘No. Yes. I’m fine, thank you.’

She ran, not daring to look behind to see if he were pursuing her. After a hundred yards or so she slowed to check: there was no one in sight, just the sound of a reedy-voiced car starting up and accelerating harshly into the distance. She looked down at her wrists, turning bright red and fiery with pain.

‘The flash of anger,’ said Patrick, ‘is something I never saw. We were courting him, flattering him.’ He suspected she had never told anyone the story before; certainly not the real story. ‘But I can imagine it inside him.’

Sara moved within inches of her father’s becalmed face, watching him silently.

‘I think your father,’ said Patrick, ‘would want to ask you why you never went to him at the time.’

‘I’d answer that, even if it was partly because I feared his shame, it was mostly because I couldn’t hurt him.’ She paused. ‘What I’d have done if I got pregnant doesn’t bear thinking about.’