Whether that ‘scuffle’ was the cause of his lapse in business, his increased presence in the house, I didn’t know. Bouzid knew, I was sure. He’d been ‘with the boat’ on the night it happened. On a few occasions I saw them together, talking in hushed voices, but I could never get close enough to hear.

I tried to forget about it, basking in my new life at Dar Portuna, in the delicious, decadent freedom. I slipped from being domestic help to lover, friend. I knew things had changed for good when Langham caught my hand and asked me to eat supper with him and Hilde as they lay on the veranda, rather than in the kitchen. I still cooked, still served food, but that was my power: something neither of them possessed. I shared it with affection and was proud.

For two weeks, the outside world did not exist. It was as if the three of us – Hilde, Langham and I – had signed a pact to be idle for a time, to take joy in each other. Bouzid did not break the hierarchy as I had. Sometimes, he could be compelled to join us on the veranda for tea, during the afternoons that seemed to last a century. Mostly though, he left us to our revels.

We soon lost all notion of should and ought. I began to leave off the tight brassiere, certain that Bouzid now knew my secret, and would keep it. Every day I sent orders to town for ice, more ice; ice to chill melon to tooth-stinging coldness, ice to mix drinks powerful enough to make us forget the heat, until we rolled on the hot tiles of the poolside, laughing as freezing gin slid across our cheeks. One afternoon Hilde produced a lump of hashish and told me, looking like a child who has raided the pantry, to ‘do something nice with it’.

Exactly what she meant, I didn’t know. It took several plates of briwats and wondering aloud whether I was meant to bake it before Bouzid relented and impatiently explained how to make mahjoun – his grandmother’s recipe, he said.

That afternoon, I worked at the stove, grinding the hash, melting butter, dicing nuts and dried fruit, mixing spices and honey and rosewater until I had a sticky, delicious mass. Bouzid had gone out, so I couldn’t ask him if it was right. Only one way to find out, I thought with a smirk.

That afternoon, the whole world was as soft as cinnamon.

‘We should serve this at a party,’ Hilde said, licking mahjoun from her fingers. ‘Send the stuck-up old diplomats wild.’ She’d left off smoking her pipe so much over the past few weeks, and she looked bronze and healthy in the sun. Langham too, seemed freer than I had ever seen him, especially when Bouzid was not around.