The cold wind of the London night caught Leyla with violence on the side of her head as they left. Ali reached for her hand, but she could not bring herself to take hold of something which brought so little comfort, so little emotion of any kind. She felt raw, as though the scars had been picked from cold, dried wounds, and the exposed cuts were now being dipped into salt water. She glanced up, towards the old lamps of the park, to the gracious brick buildings whose warm interiors spoke of comfortable, pleasurable lives. But these gave her not an ounce of consolation, no salve to spread over the mental beating she just had received.

“‘Mama,’ Tala said. Ease up on the questions. She’s marrying Ali, not me.’ Everyone laughed, but beneath the stretched tension of Reema’s powdered face, her cheeks burned. It was an easy, flippant comment, but Tala’s referral to marriage, to herself in relation to this girl; the throwaway suggestion of union between two women, set Reema’s teeth on edge. She reached for the flaming palm tree once more and waited for the first drag on her cigarette to relax her.

Leyla stood up quickly, watching as Ali grasped Tala in a bear hug and when Tala turned to her, Leyla held out a hand, friendly but formal. Tala regarded the hand with an air of amusement before leaning to kiss the girl on both cheeks. Leyla smiled and reciprocated, not wanting to appear awkward, although she was. She had never learned how to decide when to offer a hand versus a kiss. Other people seemed to drift easily into the right method for the right person; there must be some intricate web of body language that Leyla had not grasped, or perhaps it was her innate reserve that held her back more easily than it urged her forward. Tala smiled, noting the indecision in Leyla’s movement. ‘Sorry to break your British reserve,’ Taia said. ‘But we always kiss in the Middle East.’ She paused and leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Usually just before we slit your throat…’

During the last six months, she had almost completed a first novel, and she was surprised to find herself pleased with what she had produced. She had been daunted, at the start, by the sheer hubris of daring to put down on paper the sudden clustes of words that peppered her thoughts, and certainly she would not allow her mind the pleasure of imagining these snatched hours of writing, these short patches of consciousness detached from the regular, even shapes of the world about her, as a way of life that might one day come to fill all her days.

Tala paused in the shadows and looked around. There were softly translucent candles, and music that rose in ripples behind the tide of chattering voices. There were exquisite dresses cut from elegant fabrics, draped over long, slim bodies; there were jewels that gleamed against tanned, olive skin. There were butlers and waitresses, in starched white and rustling black, moving with purpose amongst the colourful women and the suited men.

Tala knew that her parents had outdone themselves. She had been surprised that they had even suggested a party this time around, bearing in mind her dubious history, but it had become clear to her quite quickly that her mother was actively planning to use this fourth and final engagement as a way to wipe clean all the lingering shame and embarrassment of the other three. Reema had organised a party designed to scream her family’s support for their eldest daughter, and to ensure that nobody missed the fact that this final fiancé outshone even the three wealthy heirs she had previously been promised to, because Hani was handsome and articulate, as well as Palestinian, Christian and rich.

It was one of her small pleasures, this ascending of the staircase, which was such a showpiece, such a piece of theatre, suspended above the flowing expanse of the living area below. At the top she turned left (the right wing of the house contained her daughters’ suites) and crossed twenty yards of hallway before gaining her own bedroom. The bed was of gargantuan proportions, adorned with a selection of suede and silk cushions. She liked the romance of the look, and it was echoed in the hand.painted wallpaper, in the florid flounce of the curtains and in the plump pinkness of the sofas which framed the sitting area.

There was music outside floating up to her from the garden - the band was testing microphones and speakers. Closing her eyes, she frowned, straining to hear the song that was being sung. Heartbreak and sorrow seemed enveloped in the soft liquidity of a female voice, which had an underlying richness that poured along the registers of notes like warm syrup. Her cadences and inflections, the heart-stopping pause as she sang up or down a range, were uniquely Eastern, unmistakably Arab. But the voice was buoyed from beneath by the flamenco rhythms of a guitar and it was pulled higher by the intense, aching stretch of two violins. She listened for a few seconds more, until the band halted their test abruptly, and then she returned, with concentration, to her contract.

As soon as she could, Tala stopped, held the book in her palm and looked at it. She smiled with pride to see Leyla’s name imprinted on the cover, and then she smiled with embarrassment to note how shaky her own hands were. She took a breath and gently pulled back the front cover to see that Leyla had written only three, short words, but they were the only words she would have wanted to see. Words which Tala had read a thousand times before, in books and also in occasional love letters, but which touched her now as if they had been written down and committed to paper for the first time in history and for her alone.

What if the doubt is misleading? What if you couldn’t find a rational reason for that doubt?’ It felt strange to be so open with Kareem of all people, but her nerves were at breaking point; she was desperate for advice, and Zina was so much in the depths of her own misery that it had not felt right to bother her. ‘Are doubts supposed to be rational? Is love?’ he replied with a sage smile. ‘I think you need to trust your instincts, Tala. I’m all for rationality, but there are times when you know in your heart - in your gut - what to do. Even if you can’t justify it in your head.’

“‘Sweetheart,’ Yasmin said. ‘Life is a game. And if you don’t want to miss it, you better get playing.’