Elyas had no ties to his beliefs. He was raised Muslim but most of that fell by the wayside when he discovered girls. But he’d never met anyone like Jia before. Her black-and-white life left him seeing red. ‘You’re a maulvi in a mini-skirt!’ he told her. ‘You seem like the kind of girl who will, but really you’re the kind of girl who won’t, wouldn’t and doesn’t. How can someone so open-minded about the world be so closed-minded about sex?’ She didn’t reply, but he kept trying in the hope that she would thaw.

Admitting that she loved him had been an excruciating process. Before him, work and family had consumed her, and her thoughts had never wandered to anything else. Love affairs and lust were for the weak-willed. Life was to be planned and those plans implemented for the attainment of long-term goals beyond any childish infatuation. The men she knew were complicated, secretive creatures. Admitting that she had defied logic and fallen for one of their kind wasn’t easy.

Elyas was honest and handsome, good-natured yet strong-willed, and he loved her, but he was a divergence from her plans and a reminder that she too was at the mercy of chemical reactions, just like the rest of the human race. Her falling for him had surprised her. She’d pushed him, turned him this way and that, and tested him constantly. He had not come up wanting.

‘There’s nothing sordid about any of this,’ he went on. ‘How can there be? You’ve not even let me come near you! And yet still I’m here!’

‘Go, then. I won’t stop you.’

‘I don’t want to go. I want to be with you! You drive me crazy sometimes!’ Exhausted, Elyas collapsed on to the sofa. He’d tried so hard to make her understand but nothing seemed to convince her. How could he make her see that he was all in? Hook, line and sinker, the works, done for, and all the other clichés reserved for a man who has lost his heart and found his head. He had no choice but to see it through.

‘I get it,’ he said. ‘I understand your sensibilities. I love you for them not in spite of them. And I’m not like him. I’m not like Akbar Khan. I’m a straight-down-the-line, honest-to-goodness guy. I’ve never even had a speeding ticket. And I can promise you this… I will never ever hurt you, on purpose, or otherwise. What else can I possibly do to make you understand? Marry you?’ He stopped.