“Can’t possibly say.”

  “And, what? You write to the Home Office and say there’s a man who appears to be running out of a restaurant without paying for fried chicken—”

  “Appears to be?”

  “There’s no footage of the food. Maybe it was raw? He has the right to leave without paying if the food isn’t up to standard.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I can’t believe even this Home Office would think this clip is proof of anything.”

  Zahra sounded a little peevish, as if she thought she was the one who knew everything about how the Home Office worked, and how dare Maryam upturn her expectations. Zahra took another sip, looked outside again. Maryam looked with her. A sky lantern seemed caught in the branches of the neighbor’s tree, but that was just a trick of perspective. It was beginning its descent, the moment when what was beautiful revealed itself as dangerous, an open flame at the heart of it.

  “You went through the High Table.” Zahra’s voice soft, almost as if she were speaking to herself.

  “I may have asked some people to make sure this was directed to the right officials at the Home Office.” It’s very good of you to convey this important information about someone seeking to settle here, the Prime Minister’s special adviser had said. Of course, we can’t influence decisions. The Prime Minister, standing behind the special adviser, had winked at Maryam.

  “And you weren’t planning to tell me any of this?”

  “You said don’t tell you.”

  “I said what?”

  “You said, Don’t tell me. In your flat. The day Jimmy came to your office.”

  “I meant don’t tell me what you find out about him.” She took a step back. “Maryam, for god’s sake. I didn’t want to have to think about him anymore. Plus, I didn’t want information neither of us was entitled to know.”

  Maryam rolled her eyes and walked across to the utility room to fetch the stepladder. “It’s you and me. There’s no need for the pretense,” she called out on her way. She hooked the ladder onto her shoulder and carried it to the tree.

  “What pretense?”

  It was only then that she understood Zahra wasn’t going to thank her, or even acknowledge what she’d done for both of them, but was accusing her. That face of hers, all sanctimony and outrage.

  She leaned the ladder onto the wall, walked back to Zahra. “You haven’t changed, have you? You want something to happen, and you don’t want to take any responsibility for it happening, so it all shifts onto me. That was Zahra then, and it’s Zahra now.”

  “A man was thrown out of this country,” Zahra said. “Seven weeks in a detention center and then put on a plane and made to leave his children.”

  As if Maryam hadn’t even spoken. As if what she had said were nothing.

  “I was thrown out of a country. And it was a lot longer than seven weeks in that prison of a boarding school.”

  “I can’t believe even you would make that comparison.”

  “You just stood there, first with our parents and then with the headmistress—twice—listening to everyone say what a wonderful friend you are, how lucky I was to have you looking out for me, how stupid and selfish and irresponsible I was.” That got to her, Maryam could sense the internal squirm. “And the thing is, I didn’t mind. I really didn’t. I knew how much it mattered to you to be seen as the responsible one. The good one. If you hadn’t become Head Girl, your world would have ended. I never wanted what you did, never understood why all those stupid things were so important, but I wanted you to have everything that mattered to you.” An old question came back. “Why did you even insist on getting in the car?”

  Zahra looked away, at the world outside, at her own candlelit reflection. “I don’t know.”

  “You must know. I kept trying to go back inside. I could tell Jimmy was all wrong. You hadn’t the faintest idea.” A movement along the muscles of Zahra’s face. “Or did you? Oh god. Please don’t tell me your proclivities started with Jimmy.”

  “Not Jimmy.” She put her hand to her hair, pushed it back, tucked some strands behind her ear. “Hammad.”

  At first Maryam thought that for some reason Zahra was talking about the last few months, the recent entanglement. But the look of shame on Zahra’s face made everything suddenly very clear. “That’s why you got in the car? That’s why everything happened? Because you fancied my boyfriend?”

  “He wasn’t really.”

  “You kept warning me off him. I thought that was friendship. It was the opposite of friendship.”

  Zahra’s fingers white on the bowl of the wineglass. It would break with the pressure if she didn’t let up. “No. I knew he was bad news. I was trying to protect you.”

  Now came rage. “Protect me? I’ve put everything on Jimmy. All that I lost. Jimmy’s fault. Jimmy made my grandfather turn on me, Jimmy made my parents send me away. But you’re the one who opened the car door. You’re the one who stepped inside. I could say no to Hammad, I could say no to Jimmy. But I couldn’t say no to you, not when saying no would have meant leaving you alone with them. You’re the reason. You’re why I lost everything.” She swept her hand in a gesture to take in everything and it knocked the glass out of Zahra’s hand, an arc of wine leaping in the air, the glass shattering on the floor, Woolf raising her head to bark.

  Maryam moved to quiet the dog, while Zahra strode briskly toward the kitchen in search of cleanup equipment and to switch on the overhead lights so she could see all the broken glass. Maryam went from candle to candle, blowing them out, giving her time before she had to look at Zahra again. When Maryam circled back to the scene of the crime there were sodden red pieces of paper on the floor, and Zahra’s hand directed her to keep away from the area where tiny shards of crystal still glinted before pointing at the ceiling, where some of the wine had ended up. Maryam brought around the stepladder, climbed to the top rung, and sprayed the bottle Zahra had handed to her. Wiped away the stains. The dustpan glimmered as if piled with diamonds.

  It was a little more work to triple-bag the crystal shards, throw away the paper towels, secure the garbage bag that everything went into, and place it near the bottom of the stairs so that she’d remember to take it out to the bins in the morning. All of this done in silence. Then Maryam poured wine in a tumbler and slid it across the kitchen counter to Zahra. Walked toward the Christmas tree and picked her own glass off the floor. They drank, looking at each other for the first time since the glass had shattered, a distance of several feet between them.

  “You really don’t know, do you?” Zahra said. “There’s only one person who made your parents send you away. It’s you, Maryam. You wanted some thug to do I don’t know what to Jimmy: Break his legs? Worse?”

  “No! I didn’t want Billoo to touch him. Like he hadn’t touched us. I wanted him afraid. I wanted him to imagine all the things Billoo could do to him.”

  “What kind of things? Torture? Murder? Rape? Only a monster would want someone to imagine all that. Your parents must have seen you were a monster. That’s why they had to get you away from a place where you could call on a Billoo.”

  Maryam pressed a hand against her stomach. “All these years, you’ve carried this around. This belief that I’m a monster.”

  “Did Layla ever tell you, in your early days together, when she first recognized the side of you that can snuff out a dream and call it profit, she came to me and said, Will I lose myself completely if I allow this to continue?”

  “Keep Layla out of this conversation.” It was bright in the room with all the lights on, too bright. With the heel of her shoe she pressed down on a button and the Christmas tree went dark.

  “There was a part of me that wanted to say yes. That part was Layla’s friend. But then I said no. That was your friend speaking. I thought she could keep the monster quiet, maybe even send it away.”

  “Don’t you try and tell me you regret that. She and I are happy in ways you’ll never have.” It was so easy, too easy, for each of them to draw blood; they knew all the exposed places, the armor chinks and the softness of the belly beneath.

  “At what price?” Zahra walked across to the display cabinet, lifted out the nude sculpture, and held it in both hands. “What happened to the woman who made this? She was a blaze of light when I first met her.” She put the statue down again, swiveled it around so that everything revealing was hidden from view, only the long bundled hair, the back and arms visible. “She capitulated. That’s what you made her do. That’s what you did to her.” She gestured toward the Christmas tree. “You put out her light.”

  War, then. “If I’m a monster, what does that make you? The pristine goddess who lets slip her monster to savage those who cross her.”

  “Oh come on. Are we really still pretending I wanted you to go after Jimmy?”

  “Why else did you call me over and tell me all those things—Najam Hussain, applying for ILR. An engineer, arrived from the Gulf. Every identifying detail. You’d already told me about Azam, how he was being sent away because of ‘character and conduct.’ The Home Office will get rid of anyone on the flimsiest excuse, you said.”

  Zahra laughed, a fake laugh, how would they ever share a joke again? “Who else would I call over? You were the only one who was there. The only one who knew.”

  “The only one who knows you. The only one who knows your subtexts. I know all the dark places that you try so hard to hide from everyone, maybe even from yourself, maybe especially from yourself. You try so hard to be a good person, Za, I’ve never seen anyone try anything so hard.”

  “What better to try for than that?” Even now, so fucking superior.

  “It shouldn’t take so much trying. Look at Layla, does she try? No, it just comes to her. It’s who she is—kind, generous, loving. You look at that and you call it capitulation because it’s so many galaxies away from who you are that you can’t even see it.”

  “Stop it.”

  Maryam walked closer to Zahra, advancing on her. “You try to be good and you fail. There is always that other Zahra lurking. The one who didn’t like any boys until one of them liked me. The one who made me get into that car and then stood there innocent while everyone said I was so lucky to have a friend like her. The one who never wanted love from a man when she could get lies and deception and secrecy. The one who places a halo on her own head so we can all look at its shiny glow and . . .” She stalled, unable to know where to take that sentence, and saw Zahra recognize her hesitation, saw Zahra think smugly that she herself had never started a sentence she didn’t know how to finish. “And not notice all the darkness inside you. Well, I see you.”

  “You see some of me.” It sounded like a concession, which meant it was a windup to an attack. “There are other parts you don’t see because—there’s a good phrase I heard recently—it’s so many galaxies away from you that you just can’t.”

  “Are we going to talk about your steadfast belief in justice and democracy and the moral character of a nation? Does Good Zahra want to be acknowledged?”

  Zahra stepped forward. Now there was very little distance between them. “Not long ago you said the scariest thing that happened in our lives was Jimmy. That wasn’t even the scariest thing that happened in that year. I thought someone was going to take my father away and throw him in a prison or whip him at a post. I told you about the Brigadier’s visit, but I didn’t tell you how it felt. Isn’t that strange? We told each other so many things, but even then I must have known that you wouldn’t understand it. In your world, a man getting arrested for drug-smuggling was a social dilemma. You lived as if the world we were in didn’t touch you. You had no idea about the absolute terror of powerlessness.” She held up a hand. A new thought had come to her. “Only Jimmy made you feel it, and that’s why you hated Jimmy. But here’s the difference between us: feeling that powerlessness made me think, I don’t want that in the world. I don’t want it. No one should know that kind of terror. And it made you think, I’ll be the terrorizer, not the terrorized.”

  Maryam put her glass on the floor so she could applaud. The music had stopped a while ago and the sound echoed, made Woolf climb off her bed and come to see what was happening. “I concede. Madam Lawyer, that was an excellent closing argument, I’m sure the jury will be convinced.” She leaned forward, dropped her voice. “Because the jury doesn’t know you. Remember how you felt when Jimmy sat in your office? Remember how you felt in that car? That’s what you brought to me, your loyal monster of the High Table, when yo u said, ‘Najam Hussain, engineer, applying for ILR.’” A new expression on Zahra’s face: uncertainty. And then she went very pale.

  One of us will hit the other, Maryam thought. One of us, both of us. We’ll make it hurt. And then I’ll have to explain it to Layla.

  “I’m taking Woolf out,” she said leaning back on her heels, widening the distance between them. She slapped her hand against her thigh, and Woolf followed her across the living area and up the stairs.

  The night was sharp with cold, clear enough for stars. From Primrose Hill she could hear the burbling chatter and singing of the crowds keeping themselves warm with alcohol. Her head was full of noise, accusations and counter-accusations echoing. Fucking superior, she shouted, and the women in front of her crossed over to the other side of the road. She and Woolf walked to the park entrance nearest them, far enough from the crest of the hill that the only people here were those entering to make their way up to the vantage point that would show them London’s light-studded skyline beside the dark snake of the river. Once, Woolf used to love to tear across the park and had to be kept on a leash for these night walks. But now she had barely placed four paws on the grass before she bent her back legs, emptied her bladder, and turned to leave.

  “Why isn’t Layla here?” Maryam said, one hand brushing against the fur of the animal’s back as they walked home. “I’m not a monster, am I, Woolf?” The dog looked up at her name, made a consoling sound. The short distance to home seemed very long. Maryam was cold and exhausted, every muscle painfully tight. She couldn’t do another round of that—she shivered—horribleness. God, it had been horrible. They’d both been horrible.

  When she walked back down to the living area, Zahra wasn’t there. She didn’t know if she felt relieved or sad about that. Then she saw the figure moving about outside, Zahra in the garden talking on her phone. She’d turned the oven off—of course, no drama would allow Zahra to let the biryani overcook. That made Maryam smile. There was some way back, there must be. They’d find it. She took the biryani out of the oven, lifted the foil. Perfect.

  The door slid open, the chill of outdoors rushed in, Zahra followed with an unreadable expression.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “The chair of CCL.”

  “At this hour on New Year’s Eve? What for?” She carried the biryani to the table, already set, raita prepared in its earthenware bowl.

  Zahra walked as far as the breakfast bar, halfway across the living area, which had the dining table at one end and the sliding door at the other. She pressed her finger on a red dot of wine that they’d missed in the earlier cleanup and rubbed it absentmindedly on her white silk sleeve. “A man came to CCL asking for help with his immigration case and I gave his information to someone who had him booted out of the country. He was someone I had an old grudge against. And I gave the information to a person who shared my ill-feeling for him, and who has powerful government connections and no morals. It seems that there’s a possibility I acted as I did knowing exactly what she would do. Either way, a man was torn away from his family and his life because I betrayed client confidentiality. I’m not fit to be director of CCL.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No one but us knows what happened, no one ever will.”

  “Jimmy knows. Not the details, but he knows it started with me and ended with the Home Office. One conversation with Hammad will be all it takes to work out the missing piece—Maryam Khan, Prime Minister’s global business envoy.”

  “Stop imagining crazy things. There isn’t a shred of evidence. Who in this world will care about Jimmy and Hammad’s conspiracy theories?”

  “You believe what matters is getting away with things, nothing else.”

  “Oh, I see, you want to prove you’re so different.” She kept her tone light, determined not to be dragged into a mud fight again. “You’re not proving it because you didn’t really say any of that. Not to the chair. If you were going to confess, you’d find a priest—I’m sure the Catholics would have you, anyone would, you’re a national treasure, after all. Now come and eat. The wine on an empty stomach isn’t helping anything.”

  “I wasn’t confessing. I was resigning.”

  It had been a night full of small detonations, but Maryam hadn’t imagined there was a self-destruct button.

  “They won’t accept your resignation.”

  “I’ve put the organization’s reputation at intolerable risk. My resignation is accepted. It’s over.” Zahra frowned, and said, in the same tone with which she’d earlier asked how many black and how many green cardamom pods to put in the biryani, “What will I do now?”

  “Zahra.”

  Zahra steadied herself against the breakfast bar. “Oh god,” she said, as if only just comprehending.

  Maryam walked over swiftly, gripped Zahra’s wrist. “We’ll make this okay. We’ll fix it.”

  Zahra leaned forward, her cheek against Maryam’s. Maryam put her arms around Zahra, felt the comfort of their togetherness, the unchanging truth of their friendship through everything the world could throw at them, through everything they could throw at each other.

  Zahra whispered in Maryam’s ear: “A part of me has always hated you.”

  She stepped away, and walked across the living area. Near the stairs she stopped, went down on one knee, and took Woolf’s face in her hands. She fondled the animal’s ears and Woolf made a whimpering sound, full of sorrow.