Sam ran his fingers down the walls, tried every dead end, no matter how private it looked. He did find names, more than he could have imagined: Dar Nour, Villa Katerina, Dar Esperanza, but never the one he wanted. He found corners of the casbah he never knew existed: a huge, old chimney oven where the neighbourhood was baking bread. A door that he had only ever seen closed thrown open to reveal the bright, intricate beauty of a mosque courtyard. The smell of soap and wet dust coming from a dark recess that turned out to be a hammam, a bath house, its opening hours for men and women chalked on the wall.

Finally, at the very top of the casbah, he found himself in the spot he remembered: the crumbling archway that looked out over the strait. Bab al-Bahr, a painted sign told him. Gate of the Sea. Heart thumping, he began to search the streets around it, striding up and down once, twice. Only on a third pass did he begin to consider that what he was searching for might no longer exist. Dar Portuna could have been demolished, or renamed, or swallowed into the casbah. After fifty years, it was ridiculous to think A might still be there.

He slumped against the Bab al-Bahr, defeated. Somewhere near by, a loudspeaker gave a high-pitched whistle and the call to prayer began, the low, tinny chant that even now made him raise his head in wonder and awe, reminding him how many thousands of miles he had come from home. His eyes stung. He didn’t want to leave all of this. The story he was writing wasn’t only a piece of fiction, he knew then. It was his reason to stay.

Slowly, he walked away, alongside the old city wall, back towards Madame Sarah’s. He’d find a way to remain here. Even if that meant selling the writing case to A, he’d do it, and hope for the best. He walked blindly, and didn’t notice the puddle until it had already splashed up his jeans, soaking his shoe.

Swearing, he stepped back. Thankfully, the water looked clean enough, emerging from a hole in the white wall beside him. He stopped, shaking his foot, only to catch a scent on the air. Water yes, and dust, but something else, sweet and heady in the evening: jasmine and wet roses.

The wall was high, twelve feet at least, vegetation straggling over the top. He followed it around a corner and the scent grew stronger, until he came to …

Nothing. The white wall ended in a rocky outcrop, a pile of rubble from the old fortifications. No gate, nothing, just trash blown into a corner. A great wave of jasmine was growing over the wall here, like a thick velvet curtain studded with flowers. They were just beginning to release their evening scent. He breathed it in, thinking of Lillian Simcox.