Dar Portuna doesn’t belong to me, any more. It really never did. Zahrah chose to sell, just after we were married. The authorities didn’t like that – they were still turning up every so often, looking for Ale – but they couldn’t do a thing. Ale’s will was watertight. So we had our wedding there, a final party attended by our friends in the city: by Abdelhamid and Mouad and their families, by Bet and the crew from The Hold, who had known all along that I would never leave, by my bemused parents and siblings and a few people we later found out were never invited at all. For one last evening, champagne flowed and music tangled in the old fig tree and I’m sure the lights could be seen from the darkness of the strait.

Then, Bet helped us sell the place to a contact of hers, a foreign gentleman investor whose name I never quite caught. Zahrah used the money to start her own business. We had a future to build, not a past to languish in. Dar Portuna is a hotel now, an exclusive one, where they serve cocktails on the terrace and cook English-style breakfasts for those that want them. It seems fitting. Sometimes, Zahrah and I joke that we’ll spend the night there for our anniversary, but we never have.

We live in the new town, in a flat that overlooks the strait with its eerie blue colour, its constant mix of two waters, tumbling together. My writing desk is by the window, and on good days, after a coffee at the Gran Café de Paris, I stare out at the smudge of Spain on the horizon and hack out a few chapters, before picking up the girls from school.

Zahrah often works until late. Her business – imports and exports – is going from strength to strength. Sometimes I think about the envelope that Ale left, addressed to her: thick with papers that she has never let me read, surely containing more than a simple will. Sometimes, I ask if I can help. But my wife only smiles at me, and says I wouldn’t like all of the details. These days her personalized briefcase is full of papers in English, Spanish, French, even Russian.

As for me, it took two years to knock that first, scrappy manuscript into shape, another year to find an agent in London willing to take a punt, and another before I was finally holding a finished copy of the book in my hands. Last Drink in Tangiers. It did OK, for a debut. Sure, there were some critics who said it was far-fetched, but my editor told me to ignore them; she said that as long as there are readers, there will always be appetite for a good story.