‘I had nowhere to go, no friends, no money,’ I told her, the gin stinging my dry throat. ‘You and Monsieur Langham were so kind to me that day. I thought, perhaps, you would be kind to me again. And I couldn’t stay in Spain. I was too afraid that he … that the man I mentioned would find me, and drag me back. I couldn’t let that happen.’

I risked a glance at her. She was staring at her hands, at the faint stripe where a wedding ring had once been.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘But you could have told us this. And there are ladies who wear men’s suits, you know – I wear trousers, quite often. If you did nothing wrong, why keep pretending to be someone you’re not?’

I couldn’t keep down a laugh at that. ‘They’re rich aren’t they, your ladies who wear men’s clothes?’

‘Well,’ Hilde said, ‘I suppose they are.’

‘Then they have a choice.’ I met her eyes. ‘Would Monsieur Langham have listened to me, that night of the party, if I had come here as a woman? Would he have given me a job, a room, safety? Would you? Or would you have seen me as trouble, as a foolish girl who had gotten herself into a mess, and turned me away, told me to go and find my work on the streets?’

Her face was red. ‘It is not that simple.’

I shook my head at her. ‘I thought you of all people would understand.’

‘Why do you say that?’ Her voice was sharp again, but unsteady.

I hesitated. I had to win her trust, if I was to stay in the house. I pointed to her ring finger. ‘You’re running from something. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here, in Tangiers, with a man who isn’t your husband. You wouldn’t be smoking as much as you do, and drinking, if you weren’t trying to forget.’

On the floor near by was her tray, with its opium pipe and lamp, its little tweezers and pots. For a moment, her face was pinched and I thought she would be angry. Then, she sagged and reached for the bottle again.

‘Am I that obvious?’ she asked, and there were tears in her voice, like the air before it rains.

Over the next hour she told me about herself, between sips of gin. I drank too, to seem companionable, and as the liquor disappeared she grew warmer with me, as if confiding to a friend. I believe she forgot all about the papers in the drawer, about my revelation. She was caught in the pattern of her own past, in the aching relief of confession.

Her story began with a marriage to a wealthy Italian businessman, followed by an idyllic honeymoon that went sour the moment they arrived back at his family home in Milan.