Everyone drives brand-new Mercs, BMWs, limos. We stand out in the battered Lada Niva. I don’t care. She has got us thus far and I feel quite attached to her. The car, that is.

We’re starving. We’re exhausted. We need a cool spring shower, but the sun is starting to spit and hiss and in the desert of all places a car needs air conditioning.

In the bazaar we discover a cup of coffee costs four times what it does in London. The chunkiest, gaudiest gold jewellery I’ve ever seen is hung in abundance inside shops. What looks like a simple kaftan costs four hundred dinar, and there are two pounds sterling to the Kuwaiti dinar.

‘Let’s hit the docks and get out of La-La Land,’ Jessie says, shaking her head. ‘Don’t suppose there’s much call for a cabaret bar here. Al-Jessah’s Singing Bedouin Tent? I don’t think so.’

There is no camping. No sleeping in the car. No amenities for tourists. No rooms for under a hundred dinar a night.

And.

There are no passenger ships to India – they stopped during the Iran–Iraq War.

One of us goes into shock and begins to cry. The other one suspected as much and is satisfied to have got this far overland.

A man might be able to find work on a ship, we are told.

My ears prick up.

Matilda is stamped into Jessie’s passport. We already know that Jessie cannot legally leave any of these countries without her wheels.

I, on the other hand, have no vehicle stamped in my passport.

Once I’ve booked us into a suite at the Sheraton for one night (a hard-earned extravagance – how can she call me mean when she set out with four hundred pounds in travellers’ cheques and she hasn’t cashed a single one?), once we have showered and enjoyed what, after so long without, can only be described as a sumptuously exotic meal of cheeseburger and chips, coleslaw and ketchup, once we have settled down and she is zapping through the movie channel, I reveal my plans.

There never is a good time to hurt someone.

I will accompany Jessie back to western Turkey, where she will be safe driving alone. I will buy her a return ticket to Australia and give her money to survive for up to a year besides.

She is the one, I tell her, who brought me here and, in spite of everything, I am deeply grateful.

‘The problem was never really about money, Jessie. The sad truth is that you and I are a knuckle and joint, but our groove simply does not fit.’

Her eyes fill up. ‘You’re snatching the magic carpet from under me, Stanley. I’m falling. I’m falling. Go on, be a love and catch me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Tell me what I’ve done wrong and I’ll promise to correct it.’