“But is your son all right?” asked Wavery.

“He’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’s tougher than any ox, he says.”

“Please. Stay for a drink. Or I could offer you tea?”

She smiled at him. It was funny, there had been times when, reading her texts, she could have cried for the gentle reassurance of an Englishman.

“Some English tea?”

He led her through the residence, to the terrace. “I’ll put the kettle on,” he said. He was alone in the house, Halima having asked to leave early. She wanted to visit the market on her way to the mosque. Tomorrow her family would feast the end of Ramadan.

Wavery returned moments later with a tray and two cushions. “Here. Put that under you.” Because of the dust, he explained, he never left the cushions outside. He sat down on the hard metal chair. Out of habit he patted the side of the teapot. It was standard issue, made of green porcelain.

“I’m afraid it’s nothing like yours,” he said.

“I like your dove tree. It is a dove tree, isn’t it?”

“Take your pick,” said Wavery. “A dove tree, a ghost tree, a handkerchief tree, a davidia involucrata . . . ”

She moved away. All afternoon, things she didn’t want to remember had kept coming back.

“The General must have planted it,” he said. “It turns out the roots were blocking the drains.”

“And that? I didn’t bring you that – or did I?” She pointed at a yellowish green plant covered by the upturned base of a plastic lemonade bottle.

“From Peru,” said Wavery, proudly. “I managed to smuggle some seeds.”

She bit her lip. Peru, where Periclito was. Stabbing bulls in the Andes. Picking up girls on benches. Bewitching them with his cassoulet. His life one long and melancholy debauchery, strewn with the carcasses – picked, licked and gnawed to the bone – of women who still cared for him, of the animals which had fallen to his terrible pleasure.

“My God, things have come along,” she said, raising her arms. “You’ve changed the house out of all recognition.”

“Nothing to do with me,” said Wavery. “The person I have to thank is Silkleigh.”

Marie Amaral winced. “Ha! Silkleigh.”

“Why do you say that?”

She shook her head at him. The Consul General was a childless man, but he was able to excite childish emotions in her. “I’m sorry. It does not matter.”

Wavery agreed, “Silkleigh can be excruciating, but he’s no more than a harmless British eccentric.”

This was more than Marie Amaral could swallow. She looked at Wavery in a long cold stare. “Please do not pull your wool over my eyes, señor. You know what Silkleigh is. You know perfectly well what Silkleigh is.”

“But, madame, what are you talking about? What do you know about Silkleigh?”

“I know all about Silkleigh. In the same way Silkleigh knows all about me.”

We forge our own shadows. That’s what Marie Amaral had come to learn, and one of hers was the English diver. He was a constant reminder of how she came to fetch up on these shores. For three decades he had dogged her, from the day she had screamed him out of her door in Oran and into the Rue Balzac. Less than two months later she was looking at his face in a newspaper. The man who claimed to be David’s friend was a wanted man. He had been arrested at Joy’s Grill half a block from Oran’s main police station. He had put on weight since she had seen him. He was accused of selling arms to the OAS. He had escaped custody through a guardroom window while awaiting interrogation. “This man is dangerous,” read the caption.