The years had passed quickly, blurring together. She hadn’t managed to escape the voice in her head – his voice – and even now, for better or worse, it echoed through the many recesses of her mind. She’d been running away from him so fast she hadn’t noticed how far she’d come. It was only as she packed her bags, ready for the journey home, that Jia realised how much she had changed.

Akbar and Sanam had raised their daughter to be the wife of a respectable man. But respectable families don’t choose to marry their sons off to the daughters of drug smugglers and money launderers. Her father found this out the hard way, when Jia wept salty tears on to his shirt the first time her heart was broken. ‘It’s not you. But your father…’ the boy had said, his words like ground-up glass. And that day Jia learnt a lesson she would never forget: she would have no control over her honour – her father had seen to that. And although she didn’t believe the things he had said about her father, that young man had laid the first row of bricks in the wall that was to stand between Jia and Akbar Khan.

Ironic, then, that it was Akbar Khan’s pain that had known no bounds when his daughter wept. He had believed his wealth and power would allow his daughter to find an honourable match. He, who made men bow to his will, had forgotten that the heart is held between Allah’s thumb and forefinger, and it is He who turns it at His will. In the world of arranged marriage, the daughters of criminals married criminals and the daughters of noblemen married nobility. Money was not their concern, bloodline and izzat were. ‘I fix the world’s problems but what can I do for her?’ Akbar Khan said to his wife. ‘I never thought this would happen to our children. They talk of honour, but is this what honourable boys do? Make a young girl cry?’ He did not know that, huddled on the other side of the door, Jia Khan was listening to every word.

After this, Akbar Khan had taken matters into his own hands and paid a visit to the matchmaker, because a young Pakistani girl is nothing without a husband.

‘There isn’t a boy good enough for your daughter on my list, Khan sahib,’ the old lady said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know anyone who would match her.’ The china teacup rattled in her ageing hands as she handed it to him. ‘Sugar?’ she asked.

Akbar Khan shook his head. ‘We have been good to you,’ he said. He held the dainty cup and saucer awkwardly, ill at ease, and the matchmaker was relieved when he placed it on the table before him.