It didn’t take us long to hack out a will on Langham’s typewriter, even less time for me to dress up in one of his suits and find some poor backstreet notaire half-blind with opium withdrawal to witness the document, no questions asked. If he noticed that the will was dated June, rather than July, he didn’t say a word, just took the generous fee and shook my hand and murmured, Merci, Monsieur Langham.

A week later the formalities were concluded. Lady Hilde Bailey became the legal owner of Dar Portuna. Immediately, without a second thought, she had a new deed drawn up, and gave half of the house to me. We both knew then that, whatever happened, we would always have a place of safety and sanctuary. A home.

I had never had a true friend, apart from Ifrahim. That is what Hilde became, the closest and dearest person to me. And if Tangiers society whispered about us, so what? We could close the doors of Dar Portuna and let jasmine grow over the gate and not bother with them in the least, until the world had moved on, and forgotten both of our names.

Two months became six, and the phone calls from the police stopped. Six months became a year and mutterings of a financial crash began to reach us. A year became two, and Italy was hit hard and Hilde’s extortion of her ex-husband was no longer viable. So, we found new ways to live, using some of Langham’s old contacts. Tangiers has always been a flexible city, and in times of economic depression, other markets tend to thrive …

When you arrived at my house, Sam, I could have told you that story. It’s a tale of how an Englishwoman and a Spanish orphan made their fortunes on the tip of Africa. I could have told you how they made friends and lovers and enemies. How they built up an empire of their own, one to rival Langham’s, by employing people they trusted: women like them, who wanted to live by their own terms, secretaries and cooks and captains with gold teeth, who knew when to keep their silence …

It’s a story of how those women evaded capture by being smart and fast and quiet, taking new names when they needed them, disappearing into their secret haven – known only to a few close friends – whenever they sensed they were in danger. For many years, until she died, that Englishwoman and I lived and loved and cultivated the one thing both of us wanted more than anything else: freedom.