What kind of a name was that? When he had first walked into her little shop and offered her his services as cleaner, deliveryman, general dogsbody, anything, she had asked him his name. ‘Romeo,’ he had said unblinkingly, just looking at her with that passive brown gaze. She had quelled a smirk at the sheer audacity of the name. Romeo? And this small, brown-skinned man, looking patiently at her with his ancient eyes? A more unlikely Romeo it would have been hard to find, she had thought as she handed him the mop. But now, as she strived to shorten her stride to keep two paces behind him, the name irritated her. She couldn’t have said why, but the irritation persisted all the way to where they were going. *** Nafisa had come to the UK as a young bride of seventeen. She and her family in Pakistan had been overwhelmed by her good luck at having been chosen by a vilayati family for their son. Simply put, she was plain looking. Her parents had despaired of ever getting her married. It was only when she reached London that she learnt that it was her cooking skills that had earned her the ‘Missus’ tag.
