His headache would only grow worse in the sun. At the top of the avenue, he made a dash between vehicles, leaping the last few feet to avoid a taxi that was pulling away from the kerb. He stepped beneath the awning of Gran Café de Paris with relief.

Something soothing about the Gran Café. Perhaps because it looked as though it hadn’t changed for fifty years, with its cork-tiled walls and vinyl banquettes, all in shades of brown. Sam slid into a seat opposite the mirrored wall, where he could watch the café come and go. It was cooler inside, a little, the air soft with the hum of talk and coffee and cigarettes. He breathed deeply, trying to pull some of the nicotine into his own lungs. The waiters moved from table to table, wearing their old burgundy jackets, despite the heat.

‘Café, shukran,’ he ordered automatically, before immediately thinking better of it. The coffee would hit his empty stomach like acid, and wouldn’t help his headache any. But the waiter was already gone. What he wouldn’t give for a cold beer. Not likely. The bars that sold it wouldn’t be open yet and anyway …

He pulled the remaining dirhams from his pockets and counted them out on to the table. Twenty-nine. And his rent for the week was twenty-five. It had seemed cheap when he first arrived. Now he could barely pay it and eat.

The coffee arrived. Another dirham he didn’t have any longer. He gulped down the glass of water that came with it, and began to stir sugar into the coffee. Three lumps, four. Might as well get his money’s worth.

No more money. And twenty-nine dirhams. He’d have to avoid Madame Sarah, whatever happened. She was already suspicious of him, after last week. He stirred mechanically, running through an inventory of his belongings. Another shirt, in a worse state. Underpants, the jeans he was wearing. A couple of dog-eared pulp novels, too cheap to fetch anything. His boots: sturdy leather, a gift from his parents several years back, they could be pawned … No, one of them had been lost in Cádiz, in a scramble on the beach. He returned to stirring. There was only one thing of value left, and the idea of seeing it disappear into the depths of the medina was too painful to contemplate. Yet it was that, or home. And he was not ready for home.

He took a sip of the coffee. It was disgustingly sweet.

Across from him, two well-dressed elderly men were eating pastries. They unfolded the paper bags with care, exclaiming over the flaky, buttery goods. Sam couldn’t help but smile. He’d seen them in here before. It was a daily ritual of theirs: coffee and pastries and talk of the old days at the Gran Café de Paris.