The guard wiped his eyes, reining in his emotions. Kindnesses were hard to come by in court, and he made a mental note of Jia Khan’s.

‘It’s your last day, then?’ he said. ‘Good luck.’

Jia thanked him, though she didn’t need the luck. She knew she had this. What the guard couldn’t know, however, was that she had no desire to win this case, not since Jimmy Khan had come to see her.

‘Why are you representing this guy, Sis?’ he had asked, his voice filled with emotion.

Khan was a title, a name given to rulers from China to Afghanistan and on through to Turkey; it belonged to the Tatars and the Mongols. It represented honour and valour, leadership. This Khan shared her surname but was not related to her by blood, so when he referred to her as ‘sister’ it was as a sign of respect. It had stopped her, that word ‘sis’. It was a term she had left behind in her past. This white world she inhabited felt no place for the ties and honour that came with simply calling someone ‘sister’. She had softened at its sound. Maybe it was because this was the first time her past had crossed her present; maybe it was because someone had traversed the north–south divide to ask for her help; or maybe it was simply a question of timing. Whatever it was, it triggered the domino effect that would change Jia Khan’s life and eventually take her home and into the arms of the Jirga.

Jimmy had taken his phone from his pocket and held it out to her, insisting she flick through his photographs. Images of his daughter filled the screen, a wide-smiling little girl, her first day at school, bike rides, Halloween costumes, pretty cakes with candles, laughing with her daddy, arms around her mummy, on and on, image after image until smiles turned to blank expressions, and blank expressions became a tiny child in a hospital bed, surrounded by machines. ‘That’s what he did. That’s what he does,’ Jimmy had said, and Jia had taken his hands in hers to stop them trembling.

The world no longer shocked her. She’d represented violent repeat offenders, rapists, and men and women who had committed heinous crimes. There were some who would say, being the daughter of Akbar Khan, she had even lived in the company of one. She knew monsters existed in the guise of friends and behind smiling faces.

But the photographs triggered something in her. Maybe it was because the little girl reminded her of her own sister, Maria. Or maybe it was because she knew that this kind of thing would never have happened ten years ago, that her father would have prevented it.