With a final rev, the taxi screeched around a corner, beneath an archway and into a ramshackle square. Ahead, the Bab al-Bahr loomed. It was as far as they could go; the streets of the casbah were too winding, too narrow for cars. The taxi driver stomped on the brake just as the muezzin’s voice began to fade.

Shoving his way out of the car, Sam gasped a few words of thanks before setting off at a run, the suitcase clutched in his arms, towards the old sea gate.

Please be there, he thought, as he ran down the steps on to the perilously narrow walkway, collapsing against the wooden door with a thud. Almost instantly, it creaked open an inch to reveal the young woman. She took in Sam’s sweaty face, his heaving chest.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said.

‘Nothing. I just … ran … to get here on … time.’

She looked at the suitcase in his hands.

‘Come in then.’ Her voice was quiet.

They walked through the overgrown gardens. With every step, the city outside the walls receded; the fumes and radio fuzz and traffic became a distant memory.

‘You look strange,’ the woman said, frowning at him as they approached the back door.

Sam realized he’d been staring fixedly at the house. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, though he knew he wasn’t. There was sweat coating his back that had nothing to do with the heat. Who was waiting for him inside? ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ he asked.

She shrugged and poured one from a jug on the sideboard, where a lace handkerchief kept off the flies.

He drank slowly, trying to calm himself.

‘Thank you,’ he said, handing the glass back. ‘It’s Zahrah, isn’t it? Your name?’

She nodded briefly. Today she was wearing denim shorts, a faded blue t-shirt. Her nails were stained yellow, as if she’d dipped her fingers into pollen.

‘Is Mr Langham …’ The words from the newspaper article nagged at him, like someone whispering in his ear, even as he tried to speak. ‘Is he your employer? Do you work for him?’

She half smiled. ‘Something like that.’

‘For how long?’ he pressed, his voice low. ‘I mean, how long have you worked here?’

‘About five years.’ Somewhere in the house, a door creaked. ‘Go on,’ she said, motioning to the corridor. ‘You’re expected.’

Sam hesitated. She seemed like a bridge between times, this woman; a real person in a place of shifting, unreal things. How did you come to be here? he wanted to ask. Who are you? Do you live here? What do you know about all of this? But she had turned her back and was clattering at the sink. She wouldn’t talk to him, he sensed, until he’d spoken to the person waiting in the study.