The men were known by Abylans as ratas. Thanks to the efforts of Senator Zamora and Abyla Independiente, the ratas were confined to their prefabricated village, and to the tunnel mouth which swallowed them.

The tunnel was never silent. From shortly after sunrise until sunset you heard hammering, shovelling, drilling, welding, scraping, revving, shouting, clanging, clashing, squealing, roaring. At night these sounds were replaced by a subdued churning. Everywhere you went in Abyla, you felt this churning, as the tunnelling machine nosed its subterranean passage towards Europe.

Abyla presented her back to Africa. No one was the least bit interested to know what happened beyond La Mujer Muerta. In Abyla, everything looked to Europe and the sea, even the trees. Everything strained to escape the grimy coverlet of noise and dust which all day hung above the city, only disappearing at night, blown away by the poniente. Then, for a short time, Abyla smelled the orange trees in Calle Camoes.

That was at night. By day, it was different. Everywhere the same thick chaotic dust, whirling off the muck-lorries, whirling off the spoil lagoon inside the new sea wall. Everywhere the same short streets making their dash like muddy children to the sea. Everywhere the noise.

At eight-fifteen each morning, half an hour before his builders arrived, Wavery walked to the Abyla Swimming Club where he swam twenty lengths of the open air pool in as many minutes. The club was situated on a cliff overlooking the eastern side of the promontory, a walk of less than fifteen minutes. Afterwards he continued to the Consulate, carrying his damp towel and swimming trunks in a roll under his arm.

At the end of his first week in Abyla, Wavery was leaving the pool when he heard a familiar cry.

“Emeeeeeleeeo . . . ”

He saw the fisherman’s mother a long way below. She bent her knees into the waves, bunching her dress above the water. She had worn the same dress for eight days, the colour of a wine stain.

“Emeeeeeeeleeeo.”

The cry seemed to wrinkle the sea. A hand of water spread ashore, darkening her dress to the waist.

A ferry trailed smoke along the horizon. Closer to the shore a small boat puttered towards the headland. A black dog sat on a coil of rope and at the tiller sat Joseph Silkleigh. His boat turned in an unhurried arc, followed in the air by hundreds of seagulls as if one of his notebooks had been torn into scraps and tossed into the air.

Wavery turned into Calle Cervantes. Already he recognised people seen the day before: women at windows of snowy Chinese bed linen, men in shirtsleeves contemplating video-recorders; a blind lady selling lottery tickets. Abyla was a handkerchief, Asunción warned him. You could know the good, the bad and the evil of everyone.

He entered the Plaza de los Reyes. This was the smaller of Abyla’s two principal squares. The Plaza de Africa at the bottom of the hill contained the Hotel Zamora and the Church of the Virgin of Africa, but most Abylans chose the Plaza de los Reyes in which to meet. Twelve palm trees provided fugitive shade for as many concrete benches. The cold benches were occupied by old men and women who sat on cardboard cushions torn from Marie Amaral’s flower boxes.