Schmidt hauled out his camera and took pictures of everything. Then he forced it on me and made me take pictures of him in front of everything. Then he forced it on Bright, who happened to be nearby, and made Bright take pictures of both of us in front of . . . well, practically everything. By the time we reached the inner courtyard he’d used up the first roll of film and retired behind a pillar to reload.

I took advantage of his absence to escape, not only from Schmidt’s obsession with snapshots, but from the others. Feisal was lecturing. I didn’t want to hear a lecture, I just wanted to look.

Some of the others had wandered off too. I saw Alice going up the steps that led into the Hypostyle Hall and John and Mary, hand in hand, following her. Bright and Sweet were nowhere around.

Perched on a low foundation wall of cut stone, I sat soaking it all in and trying not to think about what Alice might be doing. I sincerely hoped she was doing it, but I didn’t want to think about it. After a while Feisal led the group into the pillared hall. I went on sitting. It was hot, but not unbearably so. The square pillars of the vestibule opposite were decorated with the mighty form of pharaoh being greeted by various gods. Exposed as these were, they had lost most of the paint that had once covered them. I tipped my hat so it shaded my eyes and relaxed. Gradually the voices of guides lecturing in six different languages faded into an agreeable background hum, and somehow I wasn’t at all surprised to see that the reliefs were now bright with fresh paint, the king’s body and limbs red-brown, his crown a soft blue, his collar and bracelets picked out with turquoise and gold.

One of the painted figures stepped out of the pillar. He wasn’t wearing a crown, and his hair was pale gold, not black. Raising one eyebrow at me in distant acknowledgment, he turned and began removing objects from the wall. They solidified and took on dimension in his hands: jewelled and beaded collars, heavy bracelets, golden cups, bowls and containers . . .

‘There you are.’

I shook the sleep from my eyes and looked up. The figure standing over me wasn’t wearing a white kilt and beaded collar but dust-coloured pants and shirt. Larry gave me a tentative smile. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

‘It’s a good thing you did. I was about to fall over.’

‘Some of us are going to have a look at the Old Kingdom tombs,’ Larry explained. ‘Anton thought you might want to come along.’

‘The First Dynasty royal tombs? I thought nothing remained of them.’