“Oh, James.” I sighed. “I’ve hardly enough courage for myself, let alone her. If I was her, and Peter died, I’d throw myself into the sea.”

We both looked down at the playful wavelets slapping against the seawall. You could see the bottom quite clearly. It was perhaps a meter deep.

“Well,” I added, “perhaps not here.”

“No. You’d sprain your ankle at most, I should think.”

I gave him a sad smile and then we both gazed out over the bay, at the water that was dazzling under the stiff breeze. I thought of Alastair flying unknowingly onward, mile after mile over the sea. Had he suffered? Please, let him not have suffered. I glanced at James; he was leaning against the railing, seemingly absorbed in the view. He must have thought about it, the suffering, but I wasn’t going to ask him. For his sake and mine.

“Where are you going on your train, James?”

“To the South.” He turned toward me. “The temples, the Valley of the Kings. I haven’t been there since I was a boy. I remember looking out of the train window. All the fields were flooded, egrets flying over them.”

“You know Egypt, then!”

“I lived here. Very briefly—my father worked on a project at Suez. Widening the canal.”

My eyes stung, I shielded them from the sun to look at him. “Have you got a Baedeker?”

“Yes.”

“My father has Georges Bénédite’s Le Temple de Philae, the first edition. I wish I could lend it to you but it’s too precious . . .”

“I’ve heard of it! How wonderful.”

There. I knew leather-bound books would suit him. I pictured him turning the pages, enthralled.

“Thank you for being the best man, James,” I said after a pause. “Alastair would have been proud of you. But now you must get to the station.”

“I don’t like to leave you alone out here.”

But I had to be alone, at least for a moment. I told him so and he said, “If you’re sure.”

We shook hands, which was a relief to both of us. It was apt: it restored everything. We were the bridesmaid and the best man. He’d performed impeccably; I, perhaps not quite so well, but I could make amends. We said goodbye and I watched him make his way over the square toward the tram station. There were so many people around. Men, principally. Men in long tunics and turbans, in suits and tarbooshes, in every kind of uniform, and James, another man in uniform, threaded his way among them to be lost from sight, and the crowd continued to gather and talk and gesticulate, to make business and war.

The warm breeze started to dry my face. I licked my lips, tasted salt, remembered the dust of the air raid. The night seemed like another world.