From then on the two parts of her wardrobe, and the east and west of her, became as one: she’d wear kurta and jeans, shalwar and buttoned-down shirt; she’d laugh loudly when the urge took her, ask impatiently for what she felt was her right. She showed the nice Pakistani girl the door.

And so it was a very different Jia who stood in front of the mirror, taking off her make-up, the eve of her first trip home in fifteen years. She wondered how she had managed to keep away from her mother for so long. As a child she had loved her family wholly and greedily, but the loss of Zan left the air thin, making it hard for her to breathe, and the people she had loved most become the people she could bear least.

The divide that now separated them had opened up unexpectedly; no one could have predicted its coming. But she knew life to be dangerous that way, bringing one’s worst fears forward and setting alternate plans in motion. But as the Quran stated, and as she herself had learnt, with hardship comes ease. And so here she was, less than twenty-four hours away from the car journey that would take her back to the arms of the family who had wiped her tears, nursed her through childhood fevers, promised to love her without condition, and then made it impossible for her to stay when she needed them most.

CHAPTER 5

Elyas Ahmad was packing when his son called to him. He put down the shirt he’d been folding and went to the boy. He was sitting up in bed, exhausted and unable to focus. The squint he’d had in infancy returned whenever he had a migraine. ‘I’m so tired, Dad,’ he said. Elyas felt that familiar pang of helplessness that comes with finding yourself unable to solve your child’s problems. The gruelling schedule of babyhood was nothing compared with this.

He sat down beside the boy. ‘You shouldn’t be reading,’ he said, taking the book from his son’s lap and glancing at it before placing it on the bedside table. ‘The Dark Web? No wonder you have a headache.’ He gently pressed his fingertips over the boy’s forehead, the way he used to do for Jia all those years ago. The tiny, almost invisible dimple on his son’s chin wasn’t all he shared with his mother. He also had her eyes, and her drive. But stubborn and prone to overstimulation, Ahad had inherited his mother’s worst qualities as well as her best. ‘I’m bored and I’m sick of being sick,’ he said.