I was desperately hungry too. We went to Abu Magdi’s in Zamalek. Any time Aunt Monique felt a taste for baladi—local—food, she went there. Abu Magdi had zinc tables and a shining tiled floor. On the counter were brass jugs of tangy drinkable laban made from buffalo milk, bowls of foul beans, piles of bean patties, heaps of hot leathery kobeiba shaped like two cones joined together, rich inside with ground lamb and spices. And pyramids of tomatoes, large and a bit wrinkled, absolutely bursting with juice and ready to be cut into meaty slices. And turnip pickles, and sesame sauce, and mint. I ordered everything, along with some soft white flatbreads to wrap it in. We had the food packed into a warm parcel that we carried over the road into Aunt Monique’s building. Her lift was a wrought-iron cage with an outer grille that shut with an oily click and an inner door made of a metal trellis that I pulled across. We creaked and swayed upward, the dusty cable above our heads winding jerkily onto a wobbling iron pulley.

James glanced upward. “I’m safer in the air.”

“James, do you fly at very high altitude?”

“No—the opposite, in fact.” He looked down at me, puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

“Peter said you were a sky pilot.” I made a foolish, upward flap with my arm.

“Oh!” He smiled, his teeth white in the shadow of the lift shaft. “That’s slang for a priest. I finished my ordination before the war. When I go home I’ll be a curate in the Church of England.”

“A curate!”

“Well, a vicar soon afterward. Hopefully.”

“My goodness!”

“Oh, Yvette.” His laugh was lovely, masculine and clear. It echoed in the stairwells. “Your face.”

“I’m just surprised . . .”

“No. That was a look of horror. Now I’ve got two counts against me.”

We came to Aunt Monique’s floor. I pulled the trellis aside and pushed open the outer door. “What’s the first count?” I said, as we went into the apartment.

“I’m a pilot, of course.” He followed me down the passage into the kitchen. “The sort of man who would make you go mad if you married.”

“What?”

“You said so, straight after the wedding. When we left the hotel and went down to the seafront. You were crying because of poor Alastair. Anyway, you said you couldn’t marry a pilot because you’d have to drown yourself if he was killed. Or words to that effect.”