‘What’s the difference?’

A shallow set of stairs led down to the bar, where it was cooler, away from the fierce heat. As Sam stood blinking, with Norton at his back and the bright streets in his eyes, he heard someone exclaim:

‘I’ll be damned. Is that Samuel Hackett?’

Squinting, he took a few steps across the uneven floor. Slowly, the bar resolved itself from the gloom. A padded bench ran around the edge of the cellar, low tables before it. A record player sat at the end of the bar, next to a crate of records, where Roger, the owner, could keep a watchful eye. Leaning next to it was a woman. She was smiling at Sam, her blue eyes startlingly bright against skin that was as tanned and creased as hide. There was a cigar in her hand, unlit.

‘We’d given you up for dead,’ she said, her lips forming a smile. ‘Some of us before others.’

‘I don’t owe you money too, do I?’

She snorted. ‘Well, I never did expect to get it back.’ Her eyes settled on Norton, lingering at the bottom of the stairs. ‘But what have you brought us?’

‘A compatriot of yours,’ Sam said, enjoying Norton’s expression. ‘This is Ellis Norton, he’s here with Interpress, fresh off the boat.’

‘How dreadful for you.’ The woman smiled at Norton with all her teeth. A great many of them were gold. ‘I’ll bet you wanted Rome.’

Norton flushed, extending a hand. ‘I’m determined to make the best of it, Mrs …?’

Sam winced and leaned over the bar to call Roger from the back room.

The woman was staring Norton down. ‘Mrs Nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s Captain. Captain Elizabeth Lowe.’

‘Bet used to have a ship,’ Sam murmured over his shoulder.

Norton seemed at a loss, before clapping a hand to his jacket pocket. ‘Ah, perhaps a drink?’

‘Now, young man,’ Bet said, biting off the end of the cigar, ‘you are speaking our language.’

Roger appeared, limping and gruff as always, and got them a round of beers. He’d grown even hairier since Sam had last seen him. No one really knew how the Welshman had ended up in Tangier, running a hole in the wall. There were a dozen stories about him. Someone said he’d been in a secret desert task force during the war, and couldn’t bring himself to go back to Swansea with all the blood on his hands. Others said he’d been in the Merchant Navy, and had gone AWOL one night only to wake up in the casbah two weeks later with the keys to a bar in his pocket.

And you, Sam asked himself, draining the glass of beer, what great story can you tell? A dropout, begging from his parents? The writing case sat beside him, bringing back a memory of the letter; a first chapter of something new. Perhaps not, he thought.