Utter, irreversible loneliness.

I stood up and shook my head to clear away those unasked-for thoughts. The breeze rustled through branches and I had the strong desire to put my arms around each haunted tree and weep for the ice-cold existence of ghosts I didn’t, even at that moment, really believe in. But what if, as I embraced a tree, a ghost was to make its presence known to me? There would be no stepping back then from the knowledge that this lonely limbo might await.

I turned and ran towards the house. The door opened and Karim stepped out, his hand seizing my wrist as I tried to push past him.

‘Don’t listen to them,’ he said fiercely. His hand gripped me tight.

I turned my wrist in his grip and caught his arm, the buckle of his watchstrap cutting into my palm.

‘What?’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Rubbish.’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t do that. You’ve started doing that. You disappear. One moment you’re with me, and then next you’ve gone off somewhere and I don’t know where your mind is taking you.’

‘I thought you were too busy looking at maps to notice.’

He gave me one of his exasperated looks. ‘No one’s ever too busy to know when their foot has gone to sleep or their throat is itching.’

‘Our friendship is an itchy throat?’ I didn’t know whether to be amused, annoyed or touched.

‘Don’t disappear on me,’ he said it more softly. ‘Please don’t.’

I let go of his wrist and sat down, leaning against the brick exterior of the house. Karim had, of late, developed a taste for the dramatic. As if I could ever disappear on him when he knew me as well as he did, when he knew me well enough to finish almost any sentence that I started constructing in my head. I wanted to say that to him, but it seemed almost embarrassing; no, it seemed almost a betrayal of the trust we had in each other’s friendship to have to articulate such a thing. So I said it indirectly, in a way I knew he’d understand. ‘You’re such an idiot,’ I said, and didn’t need to look at him to know he was smiling.

When we boarded the train back to Karachi — after I hugged Uncle Asif and Aunty Laila goodbye with affection (I had meant to be more distant, but he grinned at me and she spread her arms wide and I forgot) — Karim, for once, didn’t retreat into the glowering silence that usually marked his physical propinquity to his father.

‘We had such a great time,’ he said, throwing himself on to the lower bunk of the compartment, having conveniently developed selective amnesia about the fuss he’d kicked up about going to stay on the farm in the first place. ‘Long walks, amazing climbing trees, the most succulent kinoos picked right off the branches. Look at my teeth! Chewing sugar cane has strengthened them. I saw a goat born. We climbed the cotton mountain but then we started sneezing. Tell him about dinner in the desert, Raheen.’

‘We had dinner in the desert,’ I said. And then I couldn’t resist. ‘Karim thought he heard a churail shrieking, ready to come and spirit us away, but then we ate the sand witch, crust and all.’

Uncle Ali rolled his eyes, but he was smiling too. ‘That reminds me. Raheen, your parents are having a party tomorrow. You kids can help with the hors-d’œuvres.’

‘Hello, Begum Ooh-de-la dripping diamonds in your nouveau riche way, would you like some horsed ovaries?’ I said, with a curtsy. ‘How’s that, Uncle Ali?’

‘I think the curtsy needs a little practice. But, Raheen, if anyone asks you anything about Asif’s brother’s wedding, just say Asif was very pleased with the news. And don’t elaborate.’

‘What’s with the nouveau riche line?’ Karim said. ‘Sonia’s parents fall into that category, according to our parents.’

‘And they have the solid gold taps in their bathroom to prove it. Don’t they?’ I turned to Uncle Ali for confirmation.

‘Well at least Sonia’s father doesn’t make fun of her mother all the time,’ Karim said. ‘At least he doesn’t think he can make decisions that will change all their lives without worrying about what anyone else in his family thinks.’

‘Karimazov, sshhhh!’

‘Karim, you’re making Raheen feel uncomfortable,’ Uncle Ali said. ‘So save it for later. Now go to sleep. Both of you.’

Uncle Ali turned off the light above Karim and my bunk bed and lay down to read his newspaper under the remaining light. When my father read the papers it was a noisy affair; paper rustled and crinkled, supplements fell out, the most interesting columns concluded on pages which could not be found until Aba lost interest and moved on to the next article. But with Uncle Ali, all was silent and orderly, and newsprint never smudged on to his fingers.

My leg dangled over the edge of the top bunk but Karim did not kick up his foot to protest the presence of my limb in his airspace. One of the women from the village had waxed my legs and massaged them with coconut oil that morning. I withdrew my leg from Karim’s line of sight and wondered how I could get Zia to see me bare-legged before the ugly stubble appeared.

‘We should go to the beach in the next day or two,’ Karim said.

‘Certes, my lord,’ I whispered down to him. Certes. An anagram for secret. I swung myself off the top bunk and lay down on his mattress, my body turned towards him, head propped on elbow, so that Uncle Ali wouldn’t be able to see the shapes of the words leaving my mouth. Something unfamiliar — confusion? incomprehension? — flashed in his eyes, and I found we were both shifting backward, widening the space between us. No, no, no, I thought. Karim and I can’t be awkward with each other.

‘You’re about to fall off, aren’t you?’ Karim said.

The bed was absurdly narrow. I nodded, considered getting up, realized that would only make things more awkward, and started laughing instead; I would have fallen off then if Karim hadn’t shot his hand forward and pulled me away from the brink.

‘What’s the secret?’ he said, releasing my wrist. As strangely as it appeared, the constraint between us had gone and we were now just lying beside each other as we had done all our lives.

‘What does Zia say about me?’

Karim rested his head on the pillow and folded his arms across his chest. ‘God, I’m sleepy,’ he said and closed his eyes.

‘In other words, Zia couldn’t be less interested and there’s no way you’re going to be the one to tell me that. Breathe if I’ve guessed correctly.’

He kicked me and turned his face to the wall. I poked him in the spine and he started snoring.

‘Raheen, I think my son’s trying to tell you to leave him alone.’

I kicked Karim in one final attempt to get a reaction, and then turned to face Uncle Ali. ‘So why didn’t you marry my mother?’ I said.

Uncle Ali looked at me the way someone wearing half-moon reading glasses might peer at something in the distance. I once heard Ami teasing him about that look, saying he only did it to draw attention to the fact that his eyesight was superb. Aunty Maheen never teased her husband, but Ami teased him all the time.

‘The music changed,’ he said.

I think the four of them chose that bit of imagery — the waltzing couples changing partners — long ago to avoid having to answer the kind of question I’d just asked. It was obvious why, though I hadn’t given it much thought before. Off the dance floor, synchrony cannot exist. What I really wanted Uncle Ali to tell me — what he really wasn’t going to tell me — was who was the first. Of the four of them, who was the first to decide to twirl away; who was the first, and who was the last?

‘Good thing the record got stuck on “repeat play” after that?’ It was meant to be a statement, but it came out as a question.

Uncle Ali folded up his newspaper — rather hastily, it seemed — and switched off the light. ‘Very good thing. Otherwise you and Karim wouldn’t be. ‘Night, sweetheart.’