I left the dreadful hotel that afternoon. Robert had gone back into the city in order, I think, to assert his independence. The proprietor of the dreadful hotel took our suitcases down to the cab and stood watching as it drove away. I waved to him and sat back feeling a sense of comfort and gratification since I had done nothing to charm him and he was still sorry to see me go. There I was, going to a better place, and there was this unattractive stranger mourning my departure from his dreadful hotel. Clever Lili. I had some tiny misgivings about Robert, but I knew he’d come round in the end. Apart from the fact that he loved me he was much too sensible to turn down the offer of free hospitality. There was a remote chance that he might stay with some other friend, but most of the people we knew in London lived in discomfort in little flats or single rooms or studios, sharing bathrooms and washing their paintbrushes in the lavatory. They thought it was bohemian. Robert was really no fonder of squalor than I was myself. He’d be along in the course of time. Anyway all his clothes and his toothbrush were in a suitcase next to the driver.

Croydon was much as I remembered it. I was not your usual sort of foreigner; not convinced that only Park Lane was fit for human habitation. I liked Croydon, and I found Monica’s house very comfortable. It might have been in the country with its big garden and its big rooms. If I could have taken it to Râs-et-Tin I could have lived in it happily for the rest of my life. As it was, I enjoyed its Englishness. Robert didn’t like it. He said it was an architectural abortion, but I really didn’t care what it looked like from outside. My own little villa—which was all I had left now—didn’t look very good from outside. Inside it was different: half oriental, half rive gauche. Very me. I was a cosmopolitan and happy anywhere if it was warm. I had gypsy blood, for I was an Egyptian. Do you see?

‘Oh, Monica,’ I said, ‘my dearest, how lovely to see you after all this time.’ I kissed her on both cheeks, behaving in a foreign way, because it would be more interesting for her and the little Margaret. The little Margaret I didn’t recognize for I hadn’t seen her for years and years since she was a child. I just assumed it was her because it couldn’t really have been anybody else and I said I must congratulate her on her forthcoming nuptials, and Monica said one was meant to congratulate the groom, not the bride, so I said I trusted she was doing the right thing and Monica said one was supposed to wish the bride happiness. So I did that and I talked rather a lot because it is always a little awkward meeting again people you have not seen for a long time, and I was remembering the things that Marie Claire had told me that I knew I was not supposed to know, and really it came as a relief when Monica asked where Robert was.