By and by we started going out. Just to play cards at a beachside café or to walk along the sand. Sea bathing as James got stronger. We went to a different beach every day for variety. Peter’s injury and James’s ordeal had given Maman some perspective on life: now she couldn’t care less what time we went swimming. So James floated in the shallows at Stanley, Sidi Bishr No. 1, Sidi Bishr No. 2, in the late afternoon when the sea was at its warmest, while Célia and I did our hundreds of strokes. We would come across him as we pulled our caps from our heads, shaking out our hair and puffing, and there he was, thin and white, his eyes closed, like a piece of flotsam. Once I kissed him. He went under in surprise, came up spluttering, laughing, and when he recovered he kissed me back, a smacking salty kiss on my lips.

We began to play tennis, as Peter and Célia and Alastair and I had done at the beginning of the war. It was easy to get a court at the Sporting now. Many people we knew had gone, and it was quiet. The boys were glad no one was milling around because they disgraced themselves, or that’s what they thought. Peter, with his one eye, thumped his serve onto the baseline and James, with no strength in his legs, flailed at an outlying backhand of Célia’s. The air became quite blue. Célia and I started patting gentle balls directly to them, which infuriated them even more. We tried to call it a day, but they both insisted crossly on a second set.

We spent a lot of time together, the four of us. So much time, in fact, that in the end Célia made an announcement.

“You two simply must go for one last visit to Cairo. Tea at Groppi, a trip out to Mena House and a last look at the Pyramids. Go on. Aunt Monique will never forgive you, Yvette, if she doesn’t see you before you leave.”

We took Aunt Monique out to dinner. In the powder room she gave me the key to her apartment and kissed me. “Take care,” she said.

At the apartment I put on some coffee to brew. The window was open and a strong smell of jasmine filled the sitting room. “I always smell jasmine at Boulaq Bridge,” James said.

“Yes, it grows there.”