The spectre of the meat market released us, only for another to swallow us up, one of perfumed breath and rattling chillies and shivering dried husks. I had to stop myself from plunging my fingers into a basket of rosebuds, had to resist licking my finger and touching it to a pyramid of powder the colour of the sun.

‘Down here are olives,’ Bouzid said, but I had to stop him in order to catch my breath.

He tutted at me impatiently. Still, he looked a little gratified. ‘Do you know what you will need for tonight’s dinner?’ he asked.

I nodded, and closed my eyes to buy time. In truth I had no idea. The scents and sights were overwhelming. In that moment, I wanted Ifrahim beside me more than anything, Ifrahim who had tasted a thousand dishes in a hundred different port towns. Ale, hacer de tripas corazón.

I opened my eyes. I’d give them their fine food. I’d drown the pale, bland chicken on their plates with flavours of Andalucía, spike their wine sauces with spices. It would be a vagabond cuisine; beguiling, never quite one thing or another. That’s what they wanted, these ex-patriots and exiles. That’s what this city was.

When I told Bouzid what I would need, he frowned at the eccentricity of the ingredients.

‘Monsieur Hubert—’ he began.

‘Monsieur Hubert was a fraud,’ I said with as much arrogance as I could, ‘and a drunk. I know what I am doing.’

He shrugged, and turned away.

‘Where are you going?’ I stepped after him like a child. I was afraid to be left alone there, in that carnival of new things.

‘To hire a porter,’ he said shortly. ‘You can find your way back to Dar Portuna?’

‘Of course,’ I said, hiding my hands in my pockets. It was only then I felt the book. The Gentleman’s Guide. The back of my neck prickled beneath my second-hand shirt.

If you’re going to play the game, you have to learn the rules.

‘Wait!’ I called, stepping after Bouzid. ‘I don’t suppose you know a good tailor?’

It was easy enough to follow Bouzid’s directions out of the socco, towards the Rue Siaghines where most of the tailors could be found. It was a harder matter to find one that suited me. I didn’t want the clean, sober shops, where sallow Englishmen sweated into arrow collars. I needed something different.

I found it by wandering the nearby alleyways. No grand glass windows, no courteous mannequins, just a peeling sign.

Sastrería Issac Souissa

I pushed open the door. Inside, a man sat hunched, needle-blind, working at a piece of mending. When I greeted him, and asked about a suit, he looked at me as if I was a young thug, sent to press him for money.