'Could you pass my phone?'

'Leave that sewing now, for God's sake.'

Nazneen danced attendance. It was a thrill, this playing house. But she knew she was playing, and she sensed for Karim it was a serious business.

He told her about his mother. 'She was always the one with her feet up. It used to make me boil up to see my father bring her tea, bring her food, wipe her hands. She was always lying down if he was around. And if he wasn't there she did everything so slowly, like she didn't want to be bothered, couldn't be bothered with her children. She started staying in bed, calling for everything. It made me furious. I was furious with him as well for being so weak, for not being a man. I never thought funny how children are that she might be ill.'

'So your father was strong,' she said.

He put his fingers over his hair. It was cut so short that it could not be ruffled. 'I don't know. I never thought of it that way.'

Sometimes she fell into a state of bottomless anxiety. She spent the night eating leftovers in the kitchen as if layer on layer of food inside her would push out the anxiety, displace it like water from a bath. And at the end of these sessions she felt nauseous and tired, too tired to care what would happen and certain that in any case nothing could be helped.

But much of the time she felt good. She spent more time talking to her daughters, and they surprised her with their intelligence, their wit and their artless sensitivity. She served her husband and she found that he was a caring husband, a man of integrity, educated, and equipped with a pleasing thirst for knowledge. She did her work and she discovered that work in itself, performed with a desire for perfection, was capable of giving satisfaction. She cleaned the flat and even wiping the floor after the toilet had flooded was not so tiresome if it was done with a song on the lips and in the heart. It was as if the conflagration of her bouts with Karim had cast a special light on everything, a dawn light after a life lived in twilight. It was as if she had been born deficient and only now been gifted the missing sense.

She did not go to any more meetings. The Bengal Tigers got along without her, but they were not getting along very well. The trouble was a lack of trouble. The Lion Hearts' press had stopped rolling. The Bengal Tigers put out a couple more leaflets (one entitled Ten Ways to Taqwa, and the other designed as a fold-out poster for Islamic Jihad with the words emblazoned across an AK-47 rifle) but without the spark of the Lion Hearts the fire had gone out.

Karim fretted about it. 'They're planning something,' he said. 'When they go quiet, that's when you've got to worry.'

In the north, there were more disturbances. 'They've gone up there to agitate. But they'll be back. It will be ninety-three all over again.' That was when the BNP councillor was elected and it was not safe to go out. 'No,' he said, 'it will be much worse than that.'

But the Bengal Tigers dwindled; they became an endangered species. At one meeting only five people turned up and Karim seethed. 'The Lion Hearts have gone underground. They are gathering their forces. And what are we doing about it?' He stood in the hallway, and all Nazneen could think of was the bedroom. 'When the time comes, will we be ready?' He worked his leg. He pushed his sleeves up, above the elbow. Nazneen undid a button on his shirt, and she ran a finger along the gold chain around his neck. She put a hand to his chin, where the mole was now covered only just by his beard.

He had begun to grow a beard soon after they became lovers. Now the hair on his face was the same length as the hair on his head. And he began to take religious instruction from the Spiritual Leader, the imported imam with the women's shoes.

'Do you know, in the Bukhari collection there are seven thousand five hundred and sixty-three hadith. The second most important is Hajjaj, containing seven thousand four hundred and twenty-two.' He sat on the dressing table while she pulled the sheets from the bed and rolled them up. 'To be an Islamic scholar . . . man, you've got to have a good memory.' He moved out of the way while she took bedlinen from the drawer. 'Do you know, the Ka'aba was built by the first human, Adam, and is therefore the first shrine for worshipping God?' She spread the sheet and worked her way around the corners. 'Do you know, when you do tawaf, how many circuits round the Ka'aba you're actually supposed to run? Three. I thought it was all of them. Basic things I never knew.' She listened and she was glad to have the words any words but her own in her ears while she covered the traces of their un-Islamic deed. In the evening, when he had long since gone and she moved around the kitchen preparing food, Shahana followed her with a textbook in her hand. 'Do you know,' she said, 'that humans have forty-six chromosomes, dogs and chickens have seventy-eight, scorpions have four and peas have fourteen?'

'No,' admitted Nazneen. 'I did not know. And what is "chromosome"?'

Shahana was offended. 'Well, it's something to do with biology. But aren't you interested that we have less than the chickens?'

Nazneen picked another blade of grass. She forced herself back into the moment. The girls returned from their walk and asked for ice creams. Nazneen considered whether to wake Chanu but before she could decide he sat up. He belched lightly, with his hand over his mouth, and then yawned with abandon. 'I'll go for the ice cream,' he said. 'Stretch my legs.'

'I'm having a good time, Abba,' said Bibi.

'Then it is worth it.' He looked at Shahana. 'And you?'

'Oh,' she said, 'nothing could be better.'

He hesitated. Something dark passed across his brow. But then it was gone. He lifted his jowls in a smile. 'As long as the memsahib is pleased.' And he walked across the grass, down to the lakeside.

'Are you in love with him?' Shahana looked fierce. Her eyes narrowed.

Nazneen went into freefall. She bowed her head.

'I mean, have you ever been in love with him? Perhaps before he got so fat?'

Nazneen reached out to her daughter. She stroked her arm and she would have liked to embrace her, hug her tight against her body. 'Your father is a good man. I was lucky in my marriage.'

'You mean he doesn't beat you,' said Shahana.

'When you are older, you will understand all these things. About a husband and wife.' Nazneen did not know which one of them was wiser, the mother or the daughter. She did not know if Shahana's questions were acute or naive, but all the same she felt proud of the girl.

Shahana was not satisfied. 'But do you love him?'

Bibi sat with her feet drawn up to her bottom and her arms around her knees, bracing herself for a crash. 'Do you, Amma?'

Nazneen laughed. 'Well, you silly girls. Don't you think I love my family? Look, here is your father now, and he has chocolate ice creams.'

On Monday morning Mrs Islam came for her money. She leaned against the wall in the hallway and another chunk of plaster was dislodged. For a few moments she massaged her hip and she let out a groan that at once suggested great pain and the capacity to bear it. She sprayed a cloud of Ralgex Heat Spray. Most of it landed on her chiffon sari but it appeared to revive her. 'I've brought you something, child. Here. Carry my bag for me.'

When she was recumbent on the sofa, Mrs Islam closed her eyes.

Nazneen stood by. From the next-door flat there came a faint and rhythmic knocking. It was the bed moving. The neighbour had another new boyfriend. Nazneen blushed. She wondered if others listened to her bed and how much it had already told.

'Whenever He is ready, I am also ready.'

Nazneen was used to this. She no longer bothered to protest. She waited. Listening to Mrs Islam was like being in Gouripur, listening to the radio in a storm. She kept on cutting out.

In the flats immediately next door, there were white people. And they minded their own business something Mrs Islam had told her years ago and now she knew why. For this English peculiarity, she was grateful.

'The mosque school is full. Do not send your daughters. We cannot take them.'

Nazneen saw that the wart on the side of Mrs Islam's nose had grown a secondary knobble. From this nodule grew a fourth hair. The hairs were long. Perhaps Mrs Islam's hand had grown too unsteady to pluck them, or her eyesight too weak. Perhaps she was, at last, attaining invalidity. And the hair on her head was not tied tightly, as it usually was, in a neat spool of white held together by the invisible powers of Godliness and elastics. Now it more nearly resembled the nest of a slovenly and spectacularly incontinent bird, and it glittered with the demented treasure of a dozen black metal pins.

Nazneen went to the showcase and opened the door. From beneath the wooden elephant she pulled out a yellow envelope, and counted for the third time that day the five tenpound notes. Chanu was determined she should have no more. For a couple of weeks he had said, 'That crook, I'll give her nothing. All money goes to the Home Fund.' But after a persuasive visit from her sons, he had settled on fifty pounds per week.

'How much money do you have, child?' Mrs Islam began to press along the length of one hand with the other, still with her eyes closed.

'Fifty pounds. As agreed.'

Mrs Islam opened her eyes. Those eyes could not miss anything. They were small and dangerous. 'Arthritis. The hands of a cripple. But do not worry. I am too old, anyway.' She fished in the pocket of her cardigan and held something up. 'Take them, take them.' Her voice faded away, and her head fell back as if she had fainted.

She recovered. 'When I was a girl, my mother massaged my hands every day. I had the smallest and most supple hands in all of Tangail. But now' she sighed 'I can't get these bracelets on. Take them, child. Take them.'

The bangles were of dark green glass, motes of gold suspended inside.

Mrs Islam took a handkerchief and wiped her brow. She smelled of mints and cough syrup; a layered smell, such as of perfume over sweat, the sweet smell of decay.

'Very pretty,' said Nazneen.

'Yes, yes. Take what you want.' She allowed her eyelids to droop. Her voice was barely louder than the rustle of her lilac chiffon sari.

Nazneen held the envelope. She held her tongue.

Mrs Islam began to massage her temples with her crippled hands.

Before her elder, Nazneen waited without comment or patience. The old woman, the better to relax her face, let her mouth hang open. Nazneen imagined cramming the money inside that black hole.

'So you are going back.' The geriatric voice had vanished.

Overhead, a vacuum cleaner was switched on. The bed next door had stopped moving against the wall. 'I don't know.' Nazneen counted the money a fourth time.

'You don't know. Of course you don't. Why should you know? If you are planning to rob an old woman of her money, then you should know nothing. Better keep your mouth closed.'

'I have your money here.'

'You have it all?' snapped Mrs Islam. Her black eyes glittered. 'Give it to me. How much is here? A thousand pounds still owing, and you are going to run away? Give me the rest.'

'That's all I have.' A taste of bile came in her mouth.

'No, child. Are you going to swim back home with your pots on your head? You have money for the plane ticket.'

She could have spat, right there and then, on the lilac chiffon. She swallowed. 'Not here. I don't have any money here.'

A change came over her guest. Mrs Islam began to breathe heavily. She held her chest and she shrank inside her sari, as if she were being eaten alive from the inside. She gasped and waved her hand. Nazneen rushed to the bag to find Benylin or some other, more extreme form of unction. But Mrs Islam waved the bag away. 'Come close to me,' she croaked. Nazneen kneeled down by the sofa and Mrs Islam grabbed her hand. Her skin was hot and dry as sun-baked leaves, and her knuckles were sharp. From this close range it was possible to see all the thousand tiny veins on her cheeks and nose. They showed through, so it seemed, where the skin had worn away. 'I have been a widow many years.' Nazneen breathed in the complex smell of the sickroom, of smells hiding smells. 'God knows how I have suffered. Without a husband all these years. Listen to me. Get close. God has tested me, a widow's life is no joke. I think I will take a little Benylin.

'Good girl. Put it back now. No, give me your hand again. I was telling you about my husband. He left me alone. But even before he died God bears me witness he was no use at all. I do not know what substance filled his head, but it was not brain. He was Dulal, the son of Alal. Do you understand me? He was like a spoilt child. Without me, he was nothing.'

She paused a while. She inspected Nazneen's face as she would inspect a mango at market, squeezing it gently with thumb and forefinger.

'You have too much tension in your face. You should press at the temples, and the tension will disappear. If you don't do this, lines will come.'

'I already have lines.'

'Nonsense, you are just a child. You are barely older than my sons.' She sighed and then sucked on her teeth. 'They are no better than the father. God gave them only half a brain each. Worse than that, they do not know it. To know that you are not clever, you must reach some minimum standard of intelligence. Do you see? All they give to their mother is trouble. I thank God for giving me sons, but why such sons as these?' There was a wet look to her eyes and she blinked hard a few times. Nazneen pressed her hand.

Mrs Islam's voice grew harsher. 'What they lack in brain, they make up in muscle. We must look to the positive. We must make the most of the opportunities God gives. I always find a way to manage. Don't make any mistake about that.'

'Can I get something for you? A glass of water?'

'When I am gone, my sons will be all right. See how weak my pulse comes? But I have provided for them. Not too little, and not too much either because why should they squander what I have built? I would rather give it to the mosque. I would rather give it to the school and let those who have brains make use of them.

'Yes, I do all these things for my community, and I expect no thanks.' She raised her hand as if to ward off gratitude. 'If someone is sick, they come to me. If someone's husband runs off, they come to me. If a child needs a roof, they come to me. If someone has no penny for rice, they come to me. And I give. All the time, giving.' Her head lolled to one side. She had given everything, her last ounce of strength.

Nazneen looked down at the parched, translucent hand of her elder and her better. She bent her head and kissed it.

'From the goodness of my heart, I give. And when those who have received don't want to pay what they owe, they run off to foreign countries, and they say, "Why should we pay her? She's just an old woman." And so it is. So it is.'

Nazneen went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink. She moved aside the rice pan and the frying pan, the colander and the grater. From behind the plumbing she retrieved a Tupperware box and took out three blue notes and five pale gold ridged coins. She took the twenty pounds to Mrs Islam and put it in the zipped compartment of the portable black pharmacy. Mrs Islam took her bag and struggled to her feet. 'Don't look so sad. When you leave for Bangladesh, I will make a big party for you. All my own expense. Just finish paying the debt, and then leave it all to me.' She walked across the room with a surprisingly light step.

Razia wanted to buy cloth and Nazneen accompanied her to Wentworth Street. Market stalls lined the road selling leather goods, coats of every kind of synthetic, bright handbags on cheap chains, shoes that looked disposable, Jamaican patties, tinned food at 40 per cent off. They ignored the stalls and stuck to the pavement. Past Regency Textiles and Excelsior Textiles Ltd, cloth draped on wire hangers in windows, Balinese prints, wax-block African prints (with certificate of authenticity), beyond the 'exclusive' luggage of Regal Stores, past the untitled window where cellophane-wrapped blocks of fabric were suspended on end in a pattern of diamonds. They crossed the street and looked inside Narwoz Fashions. Yellow Rose Universal Fashions caught their attention briefly, and Nazneen was pulled into Padma's Children's Paradise (East End) by a keen assistant who offered 'special prices' on all the stock. Nazneen fingered a little baby dress, all plum velour and silver netting.

'Something you're not telling me?' said Razia, patting her stomach.

Nazneen let go of the dress. 'Of course not.'

Razia perused the stock of Galaxy Textiles Ltd: Retail, Wholesale and Export at 70% Clearance Permanent. She found nothing suitable, and they moved on to Starman Fabrics.

'How is Shefali?'

'We are waiting for the exam results. If she gets good marks, she has been accepted at Guildhall University.'

'Such a clever girl.' Nazneen examined a roll of raw silk, the colour of marigolds. She thought it would look well on Shefali. 'And Tariq?'

Razia was bending over a cotton print, fine wavy lines of pink on a lemon background. 'Tariq is getting out more and more. Some weeks I hardly see him.' She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ears. The cut of her hair had grown blunter and blunter over the years, as if the scissors had become worn out with use. 'Now I have to start complaining that he is never at home. This is our role as mothers. Whatever the child does, we must complain.'

The shop assistant, a girl of around twenty with a heavily powdered face and patches of mauve above the eyes, regarded Razia with suspicion. Razia was dressed in stretchy brown trousers that accidentally finished before her socks began, and a collarless man's shirt. The assistant hastily checked over her own clothes, smoothing down her outfit as if it might become infected with a nasty anti-fashion virus.

Nazneen gave the girl a stare which the girl unblink-ingly returned.

'Where does he go?' said Nazneen. She had thought and thought of telling her suspicion to Razia. But how could she say such a thing to her friend? And what evidence did she have?

She had no evidence but she had a certainty that would have been overwhelming were it not for the fact that only a grain of doubt was needed to tip the scales. Karim talked about drugs on the estate. He knew a great deal about it.

'See those kids down there.' He stood at the window but Nazneen would not go and stand with him. She did not want to stand in view with him. 'Those kids, they're all users.'

She did not understand.

'They're users, addicts. They're all scaggies.'

'What it is? Users?'

'They're all on heroin. All of that lot.'

'Drugs.'

'This estate is full of it. You got no idea.' He came away from the window. He passed close to her but they did not touch. They touched only in the bedroom. 'Some of them, right, twelve years old. Know how it got this way? Ten years ago, this place was clean, yeah? There was just Tippex, or gas you know, lighter fuel. A bit of weed. Ganja. All right. Nothing bad. But then, what happened, this area started going up. And the City started coming out towards Brick Lane. You got grant money coming in, regeneration money. Property prices going up, new people moving in, businesses and that. And we started to do well, man.'

He sat down at her sewing machine. 'That's the problem. That is the start of it. No coincidence. S'like what happened in America when the blacks got organized. Black Panthers, all that. You've got to keep them down, keep them quiet.'

His phone was on the table. He spun it around. Nazneen traced the cords of his forearms in her mind.

'The FBI the Government they got together with the Mafia, and flooded the blacks with drugs, set them up with all the guns and stuff, so they can just get high and shoot each other. Long as it stays in the ghettoes, man, they're not bothered.'

Nazneen wondered if her English had failed her, misled her. She said, 'The Government gave the drugs?'

'Know what I'm saying?' said Karim. 'You got to ask the questions.'

For a while he looked inside his magazine. He rubbed his beard, cupped his chin in his hand and tested the bristles.

'Not like they couldn't stop it, if they wanted to. Everyone knows the dealers.' He gave a short, bitter laugh. 'It's not hard. The dealers are the ones the kids look up to. With the flash cars and all the gold. But, know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking-' He shook his head as if it could not be true. 'I'm thinking as long as they're on the scag, they stay away from religion. And the Government it's more scared of Islam than heroin.'

'Where does Tariq go?' Razia shrugged. She pulled on her long nose. 'Who can say? Certainly not him.'

'Looking for something special?' The assistant's face powder was several shades too pale. It made her neck look unwashed.

'For my daughter.' Razia removed her glasses and pressed her eyes. Nazneen saw that the seat of her trousers hung low and unfilled, her bosom had strayed down towards her stomach, and her arms strained against her shirt. It was as if she had been tipped in such a way that her flesh had run into all the wrong places.