Jia opened her mother’s armoire and took out the old photograph albums. She flicked through them slowly. Pictures of holidays, and Eid, Christmas and birthdays. They had travelled so much, mainly to Pakistan and the US. Zan had loved it. He had planned to take a gap year and see Eastern Europe and West Africa and then South Asia. He wanted to see the world before settling down to discover places even more distant, through telescopes and mathematical calculations. But as the time to tell Akbar Khan grew closer, he found he wasn’t as courageous as his little sister.

She had looked down her nose at him and through her rose-tinted glasses. ‘You have to tell him that you hate law, and that medicine is boring!’ she said. Their father wanted what all South Asians wanted back then, for their children to be doctors and lawyers, not stargazers. Dreams did not pay bills. Dreams were for people with white privilege.

Zan had laughed at her naivety and followed his father’s wishes, which was to win a place at Oxford. ‘A lawyer,’ his father said. ‘A lawyer from Oxford!’ and Zan finally felt he’d made Akbar Khan a little proud.

Zan was golden in more than just skin tone. Distanced from their parents by a cultural divide and with that tight sibling bond common to children of immigrants, Jia would listen to her brother the way the believers listen to a scholar. Zan was the font of all knowledge and the team leader. He helped make GCSE selections, advised on homework and fought for his siblings and cousins to take part in extra-curricular activities. As with most first-generation immigrants, the value of these things were lost on their parents. Maths, English and science were surely all that a child needed to succeed in life. Thanks to Akbar’s money and Zan’s tenacity, the Khan children basked in an innocence that was afforded to people of means. Life was good. At least for a while.

Then everything changed. Looking through the pictures now, Jia could almost map the changes, the point at which her brother lost his shine, when his face started to become gaunt, his eyes sunken.

It was incremental. For Zan, it started with simple questions, then pushing, followed by bullying, which turned to out-and-out intimidation. Soon, there was no doubting the fact that Zan was being targeted by the very people who were supposed to protect him.

The first time it happened he was driving home with his school friends. They’d been to play football at the recreation ground. Zan had just got his licence and his father had bought him a car to celebrate. There were other drivers on the road travelling much faster than the new silver Golf GTI. ‘You drive like an old man!’ Zan’s friends laughed.

‘I don’t want to break the law,’ he told them.