She took it. ‘Thanks. Now stop messing around,’ she said as she pulled the gloves over her slim fingers and took a semi-automatic pistol from her bag. ‘Looks like that summer we spent hunting in Pakistan is finally going to pay off.’

Malik picked up his weapon tentatively. ‘I can’t say I’m looking forward to this,’ he said.

Nadeem laughed nervously. ‘Really? Because the rest of us are so thrilled to be here, right?’

‘You can back out now,’ Jia told Malik gently. Then she turned to Nadeem, her voice harder this time. ‘And so can you,’ she added. ‘There’s no room for nerves on this. We will understand. None of us are looking forward to putting a bullet between a man’s eyes. I need to know you’re in this for the long haul. Once we step through that door there’s no going back.’ She waited for their answer.

Nadeem nodded. Malik straightened up. ‘I’m coming,’ he said. ‘There’s no way I wouldn’t. We’re family and loyalty is all we have.’

Each man took his weapon from the arsenal in the trunk. Samad Khan watched from the sidelines, stepping forward only when the guns were dealt out. He took out a cloth bag.

‘I have a gift for you,’ he said. He gave them each a cloth cap. They recognised it as the kind worn in the North-West Frontier Province and across Pakistan and Afghanistan. ‘These pakol were given to me by my wife,’ he said. ‘Each time she visited her family she brought one back…to remind me where we come from, she said. She had planned to give them to our children, but as you know we were never blessed that way. But I think she would have wanted me to pass them on to you. She believed it important to remember our history. The leaves from an oak tree fade, fall and are replaced, but the roots remain. No one sees what detritus the roots feed on, all they remember is the beauty of the branches and the colour of the leaves. This is a symbol of those roots. Guard its honour well,’ he said. ‘Jia Khan, you must take the red one. It has been waiting for you for quite some time.’

Jia thanked him for the hat. It resembled a small woollen bag with a round base. Rolling up the sides, she placed it on her head as she had seen her father do many times throughout his life. The brown of her eyes deepened. They were better suited to the cover of a magazine, the kind found on the bedside tables of aspirational Pakistanis, than the back of a curry house in a rundown northern city.