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that.’
    That kept her quiet for a few seconds. Then she said, ‘They’re here.’
    â€˜You do enigma so well.’
    â€˜Our Indian relatives. Some of them are here. I’ve accepted an invitation to their place for elevenses today. What do you say? Will you come?’

Chapter Four
    I had met one of the Indian relatives, years before, in Karachi. On that day, I remember, I was wearing the T-shirt with a bullet hole in it. As far as I was concerned, the fact that I wasn’t actually wearing the shirt at the time the bullet hole made its appearance had done nothing to detract from the glamour of the ravaged cloth. Our dhobi had been carting my family’s freshly laundered clothes towards our house when someone shot at his donkey-cart. No one was ever able to determine whether the motives were sectarian (our dhobi was a Shi’a) or more literally asinine (the donkey was a champion racer whose three successive victories had reputedly angered a Mr Billo, who was missing a finger and was, therefore, dangerous). The donkey lost the tip of an ear, my shirt lost the embossed letter B and henceforth warned DON’T UG ME!, but the donkey only became more aerodynamic and I briefly acquired the nickname Ug, which I secretly loved.
    Samia’s brother, Sameer, once said, ‘There is no digression, only added detail.’
    So, as I was saying, I was seven or eight and a school friend was dropping me home from someone’s birthdayparty, except I was in no mood to go home so I directed her driver to Sameer and Samia’s house instead.
    No one saw me enter my cousins’ drawing room, where a large crowd of my relatives was gathered around. All attention was focussed, instead, on a silver-haired woman in a sari who lit a cigarette and said, ‘Cigarettes are to me what coffee spoons were to Prufrock.’ I pictured this Prue Frock: a tall, thin redhead in a dress. I thought she must have been an Englishwoman from the Raj days of this stranger’s youth, and I imagined her lifting the stem of a spoon to her mouth and exhaling silver smoke. I remember wanting to impress the stranger – except I didn’t think of her as a stranger. There was something familiar … Is this memory or hindsight? But I did want to impress her, I know, so I fingered the bullet hole, hoping to draw her attention to it, to me. Instead, Sameer’s mother – my aunt, Zainab – appeared in the doorway behind me and sent me home with her driver.
    â€˜One of Zaheer’s relatives was over for tea,’ Zainab Phupi explained to my mother later. ‘And as luck would have it a whole
pultan
of my relatives landed up as well, so I was going crazy and one more child in the house to keep an eye on was not what I needed.’
    To try and distract attention from my disgrace I asked my father, ‘Who is Prue and what does she have to do with cigarettes and coffee spoons?’
    He could offer no explanation, but the next day when he repeated this remark to Dadi I thought she was going to die. She put a hand over her heart and with the other hand caught me by the shoulder, her fingers digging into my flesh.
    â€˜Zaheer Phupa’s relative,’ I said, and repeated the silver-haired woman’s remark. ‘Dadi, what’s wrong?’
    Dadi pushed me aside and reached for the phone, her ring-laden fingers trembling as they dialed the six digits of her niece’s number. ‘Zainab, where is she?’ Dadi demanded into the receiver. ‘I know she’s there. I’m coming over.’
    I was close enough to the phone to hear Zainab Phupi say, ‘She was only here for the day. She’s on her way to England.’
    Dadi’s eyes closed and her head swayed from side to side. I don’t remember any sound escaping her, but it must have because Zainab Phupi said, ‘We were all so sure you didn’t want to see her. You’ve always