I have cared for many people in my life, whether I have wanted to or not. That’s the trick of friendship. You can lock your doors, board up your gate, and still, some soul will find a way in, slipping through your shutters, creeping over your walls, tripping and falling face first into your life and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

I class you as a friend, Samuel, though a new one. Zahrah too, now more like family to me. Both of you came uninvited, trespassers into my life. But I am glad of it. Once, I was the person who climbed the wall. I was the one who crashed into a life unasked for. Should I have been surprised then, by what Langham did to me? Perhaps not.

But at the time … I felt as if someone had reached into my chest and ripped the insides from me, guts and heart and all. I was wretched. I was terrified. And most of all, I was furious with myself.

At the inn, I’d watched people deceive themselves over and over; the girls, the clients, Elena, even Morales. I had thought I was above it all. But of course, I was not. I had spun myself falsehoods out of jasmine and smoke, bound my hands with white flannel and silk and stepped smiling into a trap of my own making.

Langham had shown me over and again what he was – traitor, liar, charlatan – and I had chosen not to see it. I wouldn’t wish that on you, he had told me, when I said I wanted to be like him. But I hadn’t listened, and as a result I found myself in danger, facing what could have been the Spanish police, extradition, and the end.

Could have been, but wasn’t. I avoided that fate not through luck or cunning or trickery, but through friendship.

As ignorant as the British police were, it did not take them long to realize their mistake. I still remember their pink faces, pale beneath their sunburn when I told them for the last time that I was not Langham and finally proved it. If I hadn’t been so frightened, I would have laughed.

They were incensed by their mistake, and declared that, whoever I was, I must be involved with Langham’s criminal activities, seeing as I was dressed like him and carrying his papers, his pocket watch, his writing case. I had to think faster than I ever had before.