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her?’
    ‘Anticipation is the thing!’ cried Mr Khan. He seemed to be in a very cheerful mood. ‘But you are not dressed to receive a new bride. Finish your breakfast, then go upstairs. You will find your bridal clothes ready for you to wear. Put them on and come back. Then we will make the necessary introductions.’
    Mr Khan smiled at me.
    After I’d finished eating I went back upstairs to my bedroom. The bed had already been made, and on the bedspread, in a plastic garment bag, was an immaculate-looking set of morning clothes. Beside it was a selection of cream silk shirts, ties, socks and so on.
    I changed into my finery. The charcoal morning tailcoat and trousers fitted me fairly well. The tailor must have worked all night to produce them. I checked myself in the bathroom mirror and adjusted the knot in my tie. I looked all right. In fact, I thought I looked pretty smart. I could have done with a haircut, but the face staring back at me from the mirror reminded me of the younger, more optimistic person who had once inhabited this body, before everything went wrong. I shrugged away the memories.
    When I came back to the conservatory, it was empty. Breakfast had been cleared away and now a bronze ice bucket stood on the marble table, along with a couple of glasses. I could see the top of a champagne bottle poking outwith a cloth wrapped around it. So there was to be a celebration: I was to drink the bride’s health. But where was she? I found to my annoyance that my pulse rate had gone up. I was feeling the sort of apprehension I used to feel when I went skiing, standing at the top of a black run; or on those other expeditions, which had so often begun in the darkness before dawn.
    I heard footsteps and went back into the drawing room to see who was coming. A beam of sunlight came through the windows, making the rich patterns and colours of the drawing-room carpet glow as if newly woven. The first into the room was Mr Khan, wearing a dark pinstriped suit and a striped tie. He looked very formal.
    ‘Mr Gaunt,’ he said. ‘Your new clothes fit you very well. You look, as they say, a million dollars.’
    He turned and beckoned to someone lingering out of sight in the hall.
    ‘Mr Gaunt, I am proud to introduce you to your fiancée,’ said Mr Khan as she came into the room. ‘May I present Adeena, the future Mrs Gaunt?’
    My first thought was one of astonishment. For some reason I had imagined I would be meeting a Pakistani or Bangladeshi girl in a sari, with glossy black hair tucked under a headscarf, or else a veiled figure in a hijab. This woman looked like a European: blonde wavy hair curling just at the base of her neck, blue eyes, a honey-coloured complexion, a stunning figure. She was wearing Western clothes, of the sort suitable for a weekend at a country house party: a pale green cardigan over a white blouse and a tweed skirt, with brown suede loafers on her feet. She looked like any other well-bred, well-groomed girl you might expect to meet in such surroundings; and yet, quite unlike too.
    But it was her eyes that caught my attention. They were so full of despair and hatred that I almost flinched when she gazed at me. The rest of her face was expressionless as she was introduced.
    ‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ I said. Feeling slightly ridiculous, I put out my hand. She took it briefly. Her hand was cool and limp, then she let go.
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she replied, with only the hint of an accent. Her voice was without inflexion. She looked as if she would, by a long way, prefer martyrdom to marriage. Perhaps she was ill. She did not look unhappy. She looked beyond unhappy.
    Mr Khan smiled fondly at us both.
    ‘Ah, the young lovers,’ he said. ‘I am so happy that God has chosen me to bring you together. I can see that you are wondering about Adeena’s fair complexion, Mr Gaunt. I will explain. Her family are from Nuristan, in the north-east corner of Afghanistan, the region you call the