When I woke next morning it wasn’t morning, but afternoon. I was lying on my side, facing the window, with my back to John. I could tell by his breathing he was still asleep, so I lay still, enjoying . . . enjoying the fact that I could hear him breathing and that I was doing the same.

The scenery wasn’t bad, though. Few hotels in the world can boast such view: the Great Pyramid of Giza, golden in the late sunlight, seeming so close it might have been right outside the bedroom window. Trust Schmidt to come up with the fanciest suite in one of the most elegant hotels in the country, on short notice and during the height of the tourist season.

We hadn’t arrived at Mena House until 4 a.m. Our first stop, at John’s insistence, had been at the hospital. The legal process which would clear Feisal might take some time, and the least we owed him and his family was to tell them at the earliest possible moment that it was under way.

It required a call to the minister to get us past the guards who were still on duty, and when I saw Feisal’s father I felt so sorry for him I couldn’t hold on to my anger. His mother was there too; they were sitting side by side on a hard bench in the corridor, and her arm was around his bowed shoulders. They both broke down when Schmidt told them the good news and everybody except John the imperturbable started crying and hugging one another indiscriminately. Feisal was under deep sedation, but when I kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear I think he heard me.

It had been John’s suggestion that I be allowed to see Feisal. (‘If anything can rouse him it will be a woman.’) When I suggested that so long as we were there he might let a doctor have a look at him, he glowered and made a pointed remark about other kinds of therapy, but with Schmidt’s assistance I managed to bully him into giving in. There would be time for another kind of therapy later. And I wanted to make sure he was in fit condition for it.

After that we had to talk with a lot of people who wanted answers to questions we hadn’t figured out how to answer yet, and I had to droop and pretend to feel poorly so they would let us go. And later . . . He was out cold the moment his head hit the pillow. That’s what you get for being thoughtful.