Patience was a virtue Anne had mastered.

It came via hours of sitting cross legged in her room, waiting and praying that her stepmother would finally decide she'd been punished enough to unlock the door. Little did stepmother dearest know she had trained Anne for her own child's downfall.

She had borrowed Mariam's car, which is why Mina drove past unsuspecting. When she parked in front of their home, Daniel was waiting with arms wide on the front porch, just like in the morning.

Still in her frilly dress, her sister embraced him, before being ushered inside.

Anne bid her time.

Watched their dark silhouettes dance around the living room, guessing they were pretty merry by the way Mina's head kept being thrown backwards, her hair whipping back and forth, the way both sisters did when they laughed. She wondered if those similarities they shared ever reminded Daniel of her. And if so, if guilt followed along with it.

Eventually the lights downstairs are switched off, and it's the bedroom ones that visible through the thin curtains.

Bile rose up Anne's throat at the thought of what they may be doing there.

She pushed her disgust down, and looked at herself in the car's mirror. Her soft brown eyes were puffy, but dry of any tears, and cheeks deprived of their usual colour. Nevertheless, there was a  new found fierceness in it all, and it made her feel like a beautiful mess. A new woman, if she were to exaggerate.

But there was something she needed to do to complete this reincarnation.

Getting out of the car, she walked clad in a pair of jeans she borrowed from Mariam's wardrobe, with tawny hair now swaying around her shoulders.

She opened the door very silently, left her boots there so they would crunch against the floor. First she headed to the kitchen, reached to open the cupboard beneath the sink, where she found her targeted item. A see through tank, half filled with vegetable oil Daniel usually made his signature stir fry with.

Twisting the cap off, she tilted the tank at an angle and let the liquid fall in a thin uneven line, then slowly paced backwards, until the kitchen and living room were all covered.

Finally, she crept upstairs, clutching the tank in her arms.

Against her better judgement, she paused outside the bedroom door.

And she heard the feminine gasps and moans, several pitches higher than her own, alongside the creaking of the bed and the shuffling of sheets against sweaty bodies. A moment later came Daniel's grunts, the ones that told her he was close to becoming undone.

Anne could imagine his full lips resting on the edge of Mina's collarbone, fanning it with hot rushes of air that came with the struggle of keeping his upper body steadily above hers. Once again, she wondered if in this moment he even once thought about his actual girlfriend.

"Oh Mina." He grunted, at long last.

It answered all of Anne's lingering questions.

Suddenly she thought of her mother, who stood like this twenty years ago in their childhood home, devastated as she listened to her father and stepmother. Except her mother was much braver than she could ever be, for she collected herself quickly and took a young Anne out of the house.

But now her daughter was experiencing the very thing she wanted to protect her from.

She tipped some oil in front of the bedroom, being a little less careful now. She doubted they'd hear it anyway, over their frantic whispers of passion.

When the upper floor was covered enough, she climbed back down. They'd smell the flames much later if they started there.

Dumping the tank in the middle of the living room, she took out the neon green lighter she had brought from Wilkinson's on the way. The little fire peaking out transformed into massive flames within seconds.

Quite as when she had arrived, Anne walked out.

◇

3 months later

Karachi

They questioned Mariam first, then Anne's family. The latter had proven their innocence, the former faked it.

Of course Mariam had helped her escape, after all what are best friends for, if not for helping hide your crimes?

Airport footage had shown Anne escaping in the late hours of the night of the crime, but knowing that hunting her down would require resources the British government did not want to waste, the investigation was brought to a publicly unannounced halt.

So Anne lay under the sunny sky of Mariam's homeland, smiling under the shade of her big straw hat.

Finally satisfied.