She’d returned to England at the end of the holiday with no expectations of seeing him again. This was a holiday fling and she’d be grateful for the memories. She imagined telling the girls about Marcus and showing them her photos. ‘This is the night we stayed in the Berber village. Here we are on a trek through the mountains.’ He’d bought her earrings in a souk and waited while she had henna painted on her hands. ‘So that you don’t forget me.’ As if she ever would. At his request she’d entered her mobile number into his phone, but she’d put his asking down to a form of politeness. Or the collection of trophies. Perhaps he had a list of numbers of the women with whom he’d slept when he was leading his tours.

He’d phoned two days later. ‘That’s spooky,’ she’d said, making every effort to keep the excitement from her voice, ‘I was just thinking about you.’ And that was quite true, but it would have been so whenever he’d called. She couldn’t stop thinking about him.

‘Would you like to meet up?’ His voice had faded away at the end of the sentence and it had occurred to her for the first time that he might be nervous too, that phoning his customers out of the blue for a date wasn’t his usual way of operating.

‘Yes.’ Because what else was there to say; and he’d told her one night, sitting outside in the warm darkness, that he loved the fact that she never wasted words.

And a few weeks later he was practically living in her flat when he was in England, and she became used to him kissing her goodbye in the early mornings, and returning from work occasionally to find that his rucksack was parked just inside the door and he was sitting on the little balcony outside her flat, his brown feet on the rail, drinking tea or beer. He’d jump up to greet her and begin asking her about her work. Only when he’d listened to her tedious stories of eccentric researchers into rural English myths would he begin his travellers’ tales.