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Ranjeeta stood unexpectedly and gently touched my arm. “You wouldn’t be intruding.” She paused, eyeing me. “I’ve never forgotten it, you know. The chance you gave me when no one else would.”

I lifted a hand to run through my hair, my cheeks warm. “It was nothing, Ranjeeta.”

“It wasn’t nothing. My criminal record was all anyone saw, even though it was a minor misdemeanor.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Minor misdemeanor?”

She waved a hand. “Yeah. I didn’t get jail time, did I? And that animal testing facility had it coming. Everyone knew that their practices were inhumane.”

I smiled. Ranjeeta was a force to be reckoned with, but she had a heart of gold.

“Anyway. You’re the reason I was able to settle here. The reason I found my Charlotte.” She paused, her eyes becoming moist. “The reason we now have our twins.”

Shit. She was making me well up now.

“You saw past the record and actually saw me. No one else had done that. So, no, you would not be intruding on our Christmas. You’d be our guest of honor.”

I rubbed my face, my voice gruff. “Bloody hell. You give one hell of an uplifting speech.”

She laughed, opening her arms to envelop me in a hug. I gave her a quick squeeze and then we broke apart, me running my hand self-​consciously through my hair again. Well, she did say I was cute when I was awkward, so I must look absolutely bloody adorable right now. “I’d better get back to work.” I grasped the door handle to leave.

“Okay,” she called after me. “And remember, you’ve seen too much and cannot possibly talk about it, or else . . .” She drew a thumb across her neck in a menacing gesture.

I rolled my eyes as I left the office.

*

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, though Stacey had taken to asking random questions, such as whether or not I knew any gangsters.

I still wasn’t sure what tack to take regarding the “message” I wanted to send to Nisa. But then Stacey started describing in detail a wildlife show she had been watching the night before with her family, and a funny comment her wee nephew had made about a pair of antelope mating, and it came to me . . .

14

Nisa

“HERE YOU GO.”

I looked up at my dad and the rectangular piece of paper he was holding out to me. “What’s this?” I asked, grasping hold of it with a frown.

“A check,” he said, brown eyes widening in an isn’t it obvious? manner.

I felt my frown deepen. “What for?”

“That money I said I’d pay you back if you bought those Christmas presents for me.” He still spoke with a very slight lilt to his words, despite having now lived significantly longer in Scotland than he ever had in Pakistan.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “No, I meant ‘what for’ as in, why are you writing me a check? It’s not 1979. Just do a bank transfer.”

The look of horror on his face was priceless. “Oh no no no. We don’t do online banking.” He shuddered as if I’d just asked him to down a glass of dirty dishwater. Of course I well knew that online banking was something my parents would only participate in once hell froze over, but it was quite fun to wind them up. And also pretty easy.

I flashed him a grin. “Thanks, Dad.” I turned back to Mum’s laptop screen, where she was wrestling to bring up the correct chain of emails.

“Oh, no, that’s the one about changing the venue for our coffee morning last month,” she muttered.

I accepted a mug of tea held out to me by my dad. And then a plate of biscuits. And then a dish of nuts. “Thanks, Dad.”

He beamed, scratching at his now-​more-​gray-​than-​black hair. Dad was never happier than when people said yes to him feeding them.

“You know, Mum,” I said tentatively, aware that I was on dangerous ground, “you and the girls could just set up a WhatsApp group instead of all these emails.”