They had been undone by their own arithmetic.

They had each done a careful, selfish calculation about what they could take from me and get away with, and the calculation had simply turned out to be wrong, because they had both made the same error: they had assumed that the quiet, trusting, generous woman they were robbing would stay quiet and trusting and generous even after she found out.

They had mistaken my kindness for weakness, my trust for stupidity, my generosity for an endless resource they could draw on forever.

And when it turned out that the generous woman also knew how to read a bank statement and hire a lawyer and open a door and say nothing — the whole structure they’d built on top of my supposed helplessness came down on both of them at once.

Chapter 20 — The Balcony

Months after that, I sat on my balcony in the evening with a cup of tea, and Farah came out and set a plate of fruit on the little table between us.