Feisal and I left at dawn Schmidt and John would wait till late, when there were more people around, before they took the passenger ferry. Schmidt was the cutest little sheikh you ever saw. Since he had to do whatever talking might be necessary he had to wear male clothing, and since his accent was a trifle peculiar we had decided he had better be a tourist from some other Arab-speaking country. He was crying, of course. He held out his arms and I gave him a hearty hug.

‘See you in Cairo, Schmidt. Take care of yourself.’

‘Yes, yes.’ Schmidt straightened his shoulders and wiped his eyes. ‘Fear not, Vicky I will protect your lover with – ’

‘Shut up, Schmidt.’ I kissed him and turned to John.

Schmidt’s dye wasn’t as sophisticated as the hair colouring my female friends use; it had left John’s hair flat and dull. His eyes were startingly blue in the tan of his face.

We had not weakened John’s vital forces the night before; in fact I had hardly had a moment alone with him. There had been too much to do, and at Schmidt’s insistence he had taken something to make him sleep.

‘Take care,’ I said.

‘And you.’

We shook hands. It was an absurd thing to do, I suppose. But with Feisal and Schmidt looking on, and the black garments muffling even my face, anything more demonstrative would have been still more absurd. Feisal grinned and shook his head and murmured something in Arabic. Schmidt blinked furiously.

Since the section of the east-coast highway north of Amarna wasn’t finished, we had to take the car ferry acoss to the west bank. (Feisal had turned pale when John asked if there wasn’t a roundabout way, like the one we had taken to reach the site, and John had tactfully dropped the subject.) Once we reached Minya we would cross back to the east bank; there were fewer towns and less traffic on that side, and we could make better time.

I huddled down in the backseat and tried to look senile, while Feisal got out to chat and smoke with the other early birds. The crossing took only five minutes, and nobody approached me.