‘And you?’ she poked Mrs Upjohn amiably in the ribs. ‘Combien?—garçons?—filles?—combien?’ She held up her hands ready to indicate on the fingers.

‘Une fille,’ said Mrs Upjohn.

‘Et garçons?’

Seeing that she was about to fall in the Turkish woman’s estimation, Mrs Upjohn in a surge of nationalism proceeded to perjure herself. She held up five fingers of her right hand.

‘Cinq,’ she said.

‘Cinq garçons? Très bien!’

The Turkish woman nodded with approbation and respect. She added that if only her cousin who spoke French really fluently was here they could understand each other a great deal better. She then resumed the story of her last miscarriage.

The other passengers were sprawled about near them, eating odd bits of food from the baskets they carried with them. The bus, looking slightly the worse for wear, was drawn up against an overhanging rock, and the driver and another man were busy inside the bonnet. Mrs Upjohn had lost complete count of time. Floods had blocked two of the roads, détours had been necessary and they had once been stuck for seven hours until the river they were fording subsided. Ankara lay in the not impossible future and that was all she knew. She listened to her friend’s eager and incoherent conversation, trying to gauge when to nod admiringly, when to shake her head in sympathy.

A voice cut into her thoughts, a voice highly incongruous with her present surroundings.

‘Mrs Upjohn, I believe,’ said the voice.

Mrs Upjohn looked up. A little way away a car had driven up. The man standing opposite her had undoubtedly alighted from it. His face was unmistakably British, as was his voice. He was impeccably dressed in a grey flannel suit.

‘Good heavens,’ said Mrs Upjohn. ‘Dr Livingstone?’

‘It must seem rather like that,’ said the stranger pleasantly. ‘My name’s Atkinson. I’m from the Consulate in Ankara. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for two or three days, but the roads have been cut.’

‘You wanted to get in touch with me? Why?’ Suddenly Mrs Upjohn rose to her feet. All traces of the gay traveller had disappeared. She was all mother, every inch of her. ‘Julia?’ she said sharply. ‘Has something happened to Julia?’

‘No, no,’ Mr Atkinson reassured her. ‘Julia’s quite all right. It’s not that at all. There’s been a spot of trouble at Meadowbank and we want to get you home there as soon as possible. I’ll drive you back to Ankara, and you can get on a plane in about an hour’s time.’

Mrs Upjohn opened her mouth and then shut it again. Then she rose and said, ‘You’ll have to get my bag off the top of that bus. It’s the dark one.’ She turned, shook hands with her Turkish companion, said: ‘I’m sorry, I have to go home now,’ waved to the rest of the bus load with the utmost friendliness, called out a Turkish farewell greeting which was part of her small stock of Turkish, and prepared to follow Mr Atkinson immediately without asking any further questions. It occurred to him as it had occurred to many other people that Mrs Upjohn was a very sensible woman.