Polly thought that was probably true. She was trying to read, but couldn’t concentrate and sneaked a look at Marcus’s screen. He was putting together information for his client and there were images of lush vegetation and stunning views from his previous trips to Tanzania. She wondered again what this man who was so well travelled and attractive could have seen in her. Now he was leaning back and had his feet on the rungs of a dining chair. He was wearing the sandals he’d had on when they first met, and his feet were brown, long and bony. She longed to reach out and stroke them, but realized how insensitive that would be when Ian must be coming to terms with the idea that he’d never have physical contact with Eleanor again.

Marcus had burst into her life like a being from a different planet. She’d booked the trip to Morocco in the middle of the winter. An impulse when she’d been with Caroline and Eleanor one night, and their lives had seemed so much more exciting than hers. It had been just before Eleanor had lost the child and her friend had been full of fun and mischief: ‘Go on, Pol! What have you got to lose?’ One click of the mouse sent her credit-card details into the ether, and a fortnight later she’d arrived at Agadir airport and there was Marcus, holding a card with her name on it, leaning against a pillar and grinning in a way that was ironic and welcoming at the same time. I’m just playing at this tour-leading shit, but I’ll make sure that you have a good time. And he did. The other members of the party were elderly Germans who went to bed at eight-thirty every evening and spoke little English. In the warm evenings she and Marcus explored the walled city of Taroudant and watched the swifts soaring overhead, and it felt quite natural when he put his arm around her shoulders on the way back to the hotel. She was dazzled by the place and the man. And by the fact that she’d had the courage to respond to him. Her boyfriends at college had been shy and earnest and she’d always imagined that she’d end up with someone like that, an academic or a research scientist who spent his working life in a lab coat. Not an adventurer with brown, bony feet who wandered the world. Someone who’d been to public school and who’d grown up in a grand country house.