The dinner was being held on the first floor of one of the old mills owned by the property-rich Khan family. Land was important to the Pukhtuns and when the city’s old businesses had started to close the family bought up the premises. Unable to get mortgages at the start, they had used the old ways of ‘committee’. Large families meant that deposits were accumulated quickly and without the need for interest. The system worked by each person giving a fixed monthly amount over a set period of time. Each month all the money was collected and given to one of the committee members. Weddings were paid for, businesses backed, deposits collected and, more recently, university fees covered in this way.

Some of the buildings had been converted into apartments and kept by men for their mistresses, or second and third wives, and sometimes for gay lovers.

Much of Akbar Khan’s property had been bought in his children’s names. This mill belonged to Jia. In its heyday it had been filled with textile workers and wool merchants. Now, some of it still housed those ghosts and memories of the past, but the rest, Akbar Khan had rented out to an antiques dealer. It was a sentimental move on his part, one of his few indulgences. There wasn’t much call for antiques in this place and the dealer was unable to meet the rent requirements. But Akbar knew of his daughter’s love of antiquities and curiosities and had hoped that when she came to learn of it she would see it as a sign of his affection. And coming into the building today, she had.

As she had made her way up to the first floor, she’d wondered what her father would make of her now.

The mill was a vast expanse of space. Row upon row of grey industrial columns ran down the length of the building and parallel to each other, fixed into the ceiling and floor with heavy metal bolts. The twelve men had been standing around an industrial kitchen when Jia had entered the room, their voices low, punctuated by the occasional laugh. They watched as a portly chef stood behind a huge hotplate, getting ready to cook, an array of tomatoes, red onions and green chillies to one side of him, a butchery of entrails to the other.

Jia Khan was hungry. She had been waiting patiently and could wait no more. She asked the chef how much longer it would be, and he handed her the cleavers, gesturing for her to take over. He was a jovial man, respectful, but also one who liked to tease his cousin.