He ran his hand over his curls with camp affectation. ‘I should have been on Oprah, Stanley. She would have adored me, with my artistic triumph over an abusive childhood, low self-esteem and a drink problem. I watch her every day. Do you know her?’

‘No, I’ve not met her,’ Stanley said, grinning. ‘I’m just an Ordinary Joe, not of the status to mix in showbiz circles.’

‘Hush! Well, you do now. Moi, par exemple. Come, my new friend, let us follow the Chief Eunuch and his latest acquisition to the seraglio at Topkapi Palace and entertain you some more. This is a treat par excellence. Except for the sultan, no fully equipped men are allowed into this heavenly-hard-on-haven-of-a-harem. It is such a pity that in the netherworld one cannot, you know, satisfy two hundred and fifty frustrated maidens primed in the art of love-making but with so little chance to practise it. In case you’re wondering, the motivation does not go but the mechanics are simply pas possible.’

There was a recklessness to Pushkin that Stanley liked – the kind of boy he had wanted to befriend at school but who would never bestow friendship upon him. A lively companion from his own peer group, for a change.

Pushkin? Pushkin?

‘What books have you written?’ he asked, debating whether to pretend to have read them.

In the Sultan’s Seraglio

The waters of the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara and the Bosporus converged at Seraglio Point, where Topkapi Palace was enclosed within a fortified wall.

The Chief Eunuch, his entourage, the boy Menelik and their invisible followers entered via the Court of Janissaries, where the sultan’s elite corp were sitting eating from great cauldrons. They continued on through the Gate of Salutations, through a landscaped garden and finally through the Gate of Felicity and into a labyrinth of blue and turquoise tiles, mosaics, porticoes, recesses, balconies, the mist of fountains. They went through several interlinking rooms around a courtyard, until they came to an airy apartment where women lounged in silks on embroidered cushions, combing each other’s long hair, reading, sewing, applying make-up to each other. There was a wispy breathlessness of female voices without the drone of the male bass.

The boy Menelik sat down at the feet of the Valide Sultan, the sultan’s mother, who ran the household. Stanley thought her make-up so grotesque that she could have been a pantomime dame.

The three men sat together on a bed of cushions.

‘I expected them to be naked,’ Stanley whispered to Pushkin, unable to hide his disappointment.

‘Hey, brother, you’ve been watching too many Hollywood films with breast-popping belly-dancing harem girls. Relax, dude. The harem is simply where the women of the household live. This is it. One comes here to soak it up and dream. That crabby harridan the Valide is going to be in my novel about Grandad.’

The boy Menelik was staring into the middle distance.