‘There is no justice for people like us,’ he said quietly, his head in his hands. His weakened smile made Jia’s heart ache. She felt so helpless. Sitting on the floor of her room, as he had done many times before, he counted the painted stars. ‘Still two hundred and eighty-two,’ he whispered. ‘Some things do not change. Take one down when I die?’ he said.

‘Must we be so melodramatic?’ she said, equally irritated and frightened. She wanted to lighten things but couldn’t, and they found themselves sitting in silence. Zan’s gaze remained on the floor as he tried to process the past few days of his life. The silence was only broken when the family manservant came in, clumsily carrying a tray of more milky chai and parathas. He placed it on the floor in front of Jia and left. Jia marvelled at her mother’s abilities; she was aware of every waking soul in the house and knew exactly what they needed.

‘Tea?’ she said, and Zan nodded. He took the cup, and their eyes met for the first time since his homecoming. It gave her the courage to ask the thing most on her mind. ‘What happened at the police station?’ she said.

‘More than you want to know…’ His voice was measured, but his tone was low, as if the act of merely speaking the words would awaken a nightmare again.

‘Tell me…please?’ she said. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘You don’t need to be. I’m fine. I really am.’

‘It’s his fault, isn’t it?’ Jia said. ‘It’s to do with the things they say at school about Baba, isn’t it?’ Her words hung in the air like the speech bubbles in a comic book. They had never discussed their father’s line of work. They had heard people say things, but had left them on the other side of the door when they came home from school, falling instead into homework and TV. Some things were too immense to be processed by children. The mind had a way of compartmentalising and filing them away in order to survive. Now, though, one of them had fallen victim to Akbar Khan’s business dealings and there was no way to avoid what was being said in the wider world, and what, on some level, they already knew. Their father was all the things people said he was – Jia knew it and Zan knew it. Nevertheless, she waited for him to speak the words. But he didn’t. His silence was deafening.