He was right: she was not afraid. There is not much that frightens a woman who has had to fight to live life on her own terms, but experience had taught her when to save her energy and when to pick her battles. The waiter caught her eye, and she gestured for the bill. He came over with the card machine. She continued to ignore Nowak, paying quickly and asking for her lunch to be packed up. The waiter returned moments later with a cardboard box, which Jia thanked him for. She left Nowak alone in that café pondering what had just happened. It was rare for him to be refused, and rarer for him to fail at lighting a fuse. He was not to know that Jia Khan had had years of practice at not rising to the slights of men. She had cultivated the skill of calm. Years of chaos, watching defendants talk themselves into trouble and out of acquittal, meant the skill of diplomacy was second nature to her. She had learnt to let the silence breathe.

When the verdict came in a few hours later, it was in the defendant’s favour. The evidence had been insufficient. Nowak looked around for Jia, but her colleague informed him that she had left the courthouse earlier to attend to another matter.

She had in fact gone back to her hotel to pack. She was desperate to get away from this city; it held far too many memories. Little did she know that a year later, she would be back for good.

CHAPTER 4

Akbar Khan had raised his eldest daughter like a son, shunning his wife’s advice and ignoring the town talk. She was, after all, both the daughter of a great Pukhtun and a daughter of Great Britain. ‘My child will live on her own terms,’ he had told his wife plainly, repeating it like a daily affirmation, embedding it in his daughter’s bones.

His wife had not agreed easily. ‘But she is a girl, Akbar jaan, what will people say?’ Sanam Khan’s protests fell on deaf ears. Her husband had made up his mind and when Akbar Khan made up his mind only Allah and His angels could change it.

‘We are Muslims,’ he said. ‘Our women were given equality over fourteen centuries ago, yet you want to hold her back? The enemy of women is woman herself.’

Sanam Khan was no fool; she was well acquainted with the world and its ways. ‘You are the Khan of our people,’ she said, ‘but I’m her mother. And as a woman I know that what you are teaching her will make our people turn against her. She will be shunned for having an opinion and looked down upon for speaking her mind. And what if she goes astray and brings dishonour upon herself?’