Читать книгу Iris and Ruby: A gripping, exotic historical novel - Rosie Thomas - Страница 10

When Ruby woke, her low mood of the previous night had lifted.

She swung her legs out of bed at once and went to the window. The view of the street was already becoming familiar.

Humming as she turned back again, she picked up a T-shirt and a pair of trousers from yesterday’s heap that she had tipped out of her rucksack. She pulled on the clothes, then opened a drawer and scooped the remaining garments into it. The absolute bareness of the room was beginning to appeal to her; it looked much better without a bird’s nest of belongings occupying the floor. She even straightened the covers on the bed before hurrying down the passageway to her grandmother’s room. Her head was full of how she would start helping Iris to record her memories. Maybe after all she could try to write them down for her. The way they were written wouldn’t matter, surely? No one would be marking them or anything like that, not like school or college.

They could start talking this morning, while they were eating their breakfast.

Ruby was looking forward to figs and yoghurt and honey.

The door to Iris’s room stood open. She skipped up to it, ready to call out a greeting, then stopped in her tracks. The window was shuttered and the only light came from a lamp beside the bed. Iris was lying on her back and Auntie was reaching over her to mop her forehead with a cloth. The air smelled sour, with a strong tang of disinfectant. When Auntie moved aside Ruby saw that Iris’s face was wax-pale, and the cheeks were sunken. Her nose looked too big for the rest of her face and her eyes were closed. It was as if she had died in the night.

Ruby’s cheerful words dried up. She hovered in the doorway until Auntie half turned and saw her. At once she came at Ruby, making a shooing movement with her hands. Iris lay motionless.

‘What’s the matter? What’s happened? Is she ill?’

The answer was a few mumbled words in Arabic and a push away from the door. Ruby could only retreat and head downstairs in search of Mamdooh. She found him in the kitchen at the back of the house.

‘Is my grandmother very ill?’

Mamdooh pressed his fig-coloured lips together. ‘Mum-reese has fever.’

‘What does that mean?’

They glared at each other.

‘Fever,’ he repeated. And then, making a concession by way of further information, ‘Doctor is coming. Now she must sleep.’ He didn’t actually push her, but he made it as clear as Auntie had done that Ruby was in the way.

‘Will she be all right?’

‘Inshallah,’ Mamdooh murmured, flicking his eyes towards the ceiling.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Nothing, Miss.’

Ruby glanced around the kitchen. The walls were painted a shiny, old-fashioned cream colour and the cupboards had perforated metal doors. There was a table covered with an oilcloth, an old-fashioned metal draining board at the side of the chipped enamel sink. There was a smell of paraffin and boiled laundry.

‘All right.’ She sighed. She knew something about sudden death but she had no idea about illness; it had never played any part in her life.

Iris wasn’t going to die right now, was she? What would happen to her, Ruby, if she did?

There was no answer to this. She would just have to wait for the doctor to come.

She wandered out into the courtyard and sat for a few minutes on the stool next to Iris’s empty chair, watching the way that sunlight turned the trickling water into a rivulet of diamonds. Soon she realised that she was very hungry indeed, and decided that it would be simpler to go out and buy herself something to eat rather than trying to negotiate Mamdooh and the kitchen. She checked that she had money in her trouser pocket and let herself out of the front door.

As soon as she started walking the heat enveloped her, and sweat prickled at the nape of her neck and in the hollow of her back. She kept to the shady side of the alleyway. There was an exhausted dog panting in a patch of deeper shade beside a flight of stone steps. He lifted his head as she passed and showed his pink tongue, and Ruby unthinkingly stooped to pet him. The dog cringed, lifting his legs at the same time to reveal a mass of sores on his belly. Flies rose in a buzzing black squadron.

Ruby shuddered and snatched her hand away.

She marched onwards, following the route to the busy street that Mamdooh had taken the day before. She had noticed plenty of little bakery and coffee shops in the bazaar, she would buy some breakfast there.

The underpass led her to the edge of the maze. She hesitated, looking back over her shoulder as if someone might be tailing her, then hurried into the nearest alley where coffee was one of the stronger elements in the thick tangle of smells. But the narrow shops and piled barrows here were all crammed with plastic toys and knick-knacks. Dolls’ pink faces leered at her and dented boxes containing teasets and miniature cars were piled in teetering pyramids. Two men had a tray of toy dogs that yapped and turned somersaults and emitted tinny barking noises. As Ruby tried to squeeze past, two of the toys fell off the tray and landed on their backs with their plastic feet still pawing the air. A trio of small boys bobbed in front of her, shouting hello and holding up fistfuls of biros. ‘Very good, nice pens,’ they insisted, jumping in front of her when she tried to dodge them. The crowd was dense, choking the alley in both directions. The stallholders began calling out and holding up their goods for her attention.

A man blocked her path. ‘This way. Just looking, very cheap.’ When she tried to edge past him he caught her elbow and she had to shake him off. He yelled after her, ‘Just looking, why not?’

She felt like shouting back that she didn’t want a plastic teaset, that was why not, but the effort seemed too great. Music pulsing from a tier of plastic and gilt transistor radios was so loud it was like walking into a solid wall. She pushed past the people immediately in front and a wave of protests washed after her. She turned hastily right and then just as quickly left, at random, trying to get away from the toy vendors and the people she had just trampled.

In this area of the market the stallholders and shopkeepers were selling clothes and shoes. Barrows were stacked high with Adidas nylon tracksuits and white trainers, and the walls were festooned with racks of shiny blouses and pairs of huge pink knickers and bras with bucket-sized cups. There were more women shoppers now, all with their heads and throats swathed in grey or white scarves, all with long-sleeved tops and skirts that hid their legs. The tourists she had noticed yesterday were conspicuously absent. Ruby was sure that everyone was staring at her. She felt increasingly grotesque. Her hair obscenely sprouted and frizzed in the damp heat and her arms and breasts seemed to swell and bulge out of her tight T-shirt and her sweaty trousers bit into her waist and hips. She was too tall. Her skin was too pale and she was clammy with heat and rising panic.

She was also very thirsty but there was nothing as far as the eye could see except mounds of shirts and shoes, and bolts of synthetic fabric that made her drip with sweat just to look at them. She pushed forward, telling herself that somewhere not too far away there would be someone selling bottles of water. The shouts of the vendors and chipped quarter-tones of loud fuzzy music banged in her head.

She was gasping for breath as she stumbled out into a square that looked familiar. It was familiar – it was where Mamdooh had come yesterday, to meet his friends. There was the same coarse, dusty foliage and a pair of sun umbrellas rooted in pitted concrete cubes.

A group of men was gathered at an empty tin table. They weren’t eating or drinking – that was because of Ramadan, Ruby knew that now. But they weren’t talking either. They just sat in a horseshoe, looking out into the hot white light. Looking at her.

She walked forward, thinking she could ask for help because they had seen her with Mamdooh. But none of the faces betrayed even a flicker of recognition. She hesitated, not sure now whether these really were Mamdooh’s friends. Maybe it wasn’t even the same square. She detoured a few steps to the murky door of the café, intent on buying some water, but when she peered inside she saw only men’s faces turning blankly towards her. A waiter wearing an apron looked on, absolutely unwelcoming.

Ruby turned tail, even though her throat was now painfully dry. She paced back into the sunlight in the middle of the square and turned full circle, trying to work out which of a half-dozen alley mouths to make for. She had no idea.

Her glance passed across someone leaning against a wall a few yards away, then jerked back again.

Here was a face she recognised. Where and when had she seen it before?

Yesterday, that was it. It was Nafouz’s younger, handsomer brother.

He was slouching, one knee bent with the foot pressed against the wall behind him. He was also openly watching her.

Ruby marched up to him.

‘I’m fucking glad to see you,’ she said, trying to hide just how relieved she actually was. ‘I’m completely, totally bloody lost.’

He looked slightly shocked at her language, but also pleased and – surprisingly – rather shy.

‘I think you are lost,’ he agreed, his nice smile showing his good teeth.

‘Are you following me?’

‘Why would I do that?’

He was still smiling so that she didn’t know whether it was a straight question or a mocking one.

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘You swear very much for an English girl, Ruby.’

‘D’you have a problem with it?’

‘It is not problem for me, no.’

‘Right. Look, now you’re here, can we go somewhere and buy a drink? I’m really thirsty.’

He pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Of course. Please come with me this way.’

They made their way together down a thin passageway with the old walls on either side leaning inwards so they seemed almost to touch at the top.

Ruby said, ‘Um, I’m really sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘It is Ashraf. You can call me Ash.’

‘OK, then, Ash. Where are we going?’

‘To a place the tourists like.’ His smile flashed at her over his shoulder. He was definitely mocking her now, but she was too thirsty to bother with a response. They walked in silence for a few minutes. The gathering threat had subsided, Ruby noticed. Either she had been overreacting, or she had become less conspicuous because she had an escort.

After a few more corners of the maze she was about to protest, but then they came to an entire lane that was filled with rickety chairs and tables, spilling out of the open doors of a café. Waiters with trays held at shoulder height threaded between the tables, plonking down cups and bottles and bills. Ash had been right about the tourists, because almost all of the people crammed into the alley were Westerners with cameras and bags of bazaar purchases. Mucus-faced urchins and Egyptian women with dark faces and glittering eyes worked the tables, trying to sell purses and lighters and packets of tissues. Ash took Ruby’s hand and towed her through the crowd to a just-vacated table, well-placed on the threshold of the café itself. Peering into the gloom inside, Ruby saw the glint of huge, fogged mirrors covering the walls.

A waiter was already looming over them as she sank into a chair. She asked for a bottle of water and a cup of coffee and some yoghurt and then gestured to Ash.

He shook his head without speaking.

‘Sorry. Forgot,’ Ruby sighed.

When the water came she tore off the plastic top and downed half of it.

‘Why are you in Khan on your own?’

Ruby told him.

‘I am sorry for your grandmother’s illness,’ he said. ‘She will be well soon, inshallah.’

‘Yeah. I hope so.’

Once she had quenched her thirst and spooned up some yoghurt, Ruby sat back and looked around. Ash was watching the crowds, with his face in profile. He was very good-looking, with fine, almost feminine features and thick, long eyelashes. She reached out to the pack of Marlboro that showed in the pocket of his shirt.

‘Can I bum one of these?’

‘You are a woman. It is better not smoke in public.’

Ruby snorted, then clicked Ash’s lighter to the cigarette. After inhaling deeply she said, ‘So. No swearing or smoking. What am I allowed to do, according to you?’

Ash raised one eyebrow. ‘Maybe come for a ride with me?’

‘You’ve got a car?’ It was an entrancing idea. She was dying to see Cairo beyond this isthmus of ancient streets but after her experience in the bazaar she would have preferred not to try it alone.

Rather stiffly Ash said, ‘I have my moby. You can be pillion passenger.’

‘Moby? Oh, one of those bikes with engines. OK then.’ Ruby scraped the last of the yoghurt out of the jar.

‘You are still hungry I think.’

‘Yeah, I am, actually.’

Ash stopped the waiter and asked him for something. While they waited they smoked and watched the tourists come and go. Because she was with Ash and because Iris actually lived here, Ruby now felt superior to mere holiday-makers.

A plate was put down in front of her. There were two fried eggs and a basket of flat bread.

‘Perfect,’ she crowed, and Ash looked pleased.

While she devoured the food he told her that he worked at night as a telephonist in a big hospital. ‘Very good job,’ he said.

He was also trying to improve his English, and saving up to pay for a computer study course. Nafouz was helping him, but they had to give money to their mother and younger brothers and sisters. Their father had died more than two years ago.

‘May he rest with God,’ Ash added.

Ruby put her knife and fork down on a clean plate, and picked up the bill the waiter had brought. She frowned at the blurry blue numerals.

‘I would like to pay for you, but this place is not cheap,’ Ash said awkwardly.

‘Why should you pay for me?’

‘Because I am a man.’

‘I can pay for myself. For now, anyway,’ Ruby said. ‘And you haven’t eaten anything. Shall we go?’

They left the café and Ash led the way back to the underpass. It was surprisingly and disorientatingly close at hand.

Ash’s bike was locked to a grille in the wall at the end of the narrow street leading straight to Iris’s house and the big mosque.

‘What’s it doing parked right here? You are following me,’ Ruby accused. ‘Did you tail me all the way round that bloody bazaar?’

He only grinned and straddled the machine’s seat, sliding his hips forward to make room for Ruby on the pillion. ‘You are coming?’

‘I suppose so. Just for half an hour. Then you’ve got to bring me back to check how my grandmother is, right?’

She sat primly upright at first, but then the little machine shot forward and she had to grab Ash round the waist in order not to fall off the back. He sped into the traffic, weaving in and out of taxis and buses. Ruby ducked her face behind his shoulder, too afraid to look where they were going. The dusty sides of cars flashed past an inch from her thigh and clouds of gritty blue exhaust fumes made her eyes sting. When they stopped at traffic lights she put her feet on solid ground with a gulp of relief, but only a second later they would lurch forward again in a surge of metal and revving engines. Cairo appeared to be one solid mass of overheated chrome and steel.

‘You like?’ Ash howled at her over his shoulder.

‘I hate,’ she screamed back, but he only laughed.

They emerged into a vast square set about with tall buildings and with an inferno of endlessly revolving traffic trapped within it.

‘Midan Tahrir,’ Ash mouthed at her.

‘Is that so?’

He waved a reckless arm at a low pink block. ‘Egyptian Museum. Very famous, I take you soon.’

‘Can’t wait. Are we going to stop?’

‘Maybe.’

A moment later they shot out into slightly clearer air. Ruby saw branches and leaves against open sky as Ash swung the bike in a flashy circle and cut the engine to bring them coasting up against the kerb. Ruby sprang off, coughing and rubbing her eyes, and Ash locked the bike to a puny sapling rooted in the wide pavement. They were in a boulevard lined with trees. On the other side, beyond several lanes of traffic, was a low wall and then seemingly empty air.

‘Come,’ Ash commanded. He took her wrist and they darted into a gap between thundering buses.

Below and beyond the wall, there was water. It was a wide, swirling, grey-brown river and on it sailed a dozen little boats with slanting masts and graceful sails like unfurled handkerchiefs. Ruby leaned far out over the wall, looking at the vista of bridges spanning the water, towers and distant trees.

‘Nile river,’ Ash said at her side. She gazed at the ripples and reflections. Tall buildings on the opposite bank and humid grey clouds swam on the moving surface.

‘That way’ – he gestured – ‘Alexandria. Then Europe. And that way’ – he swept his left arm in a stately arc along the river – ‘Egypt.’ For Ash, it seemed, the name was enough to convey the magnificence of his country. He took her hand to emphasise the importance of what he was showing her.

‘Yeah.’

Her unwillingness to be impressed annoyed him. He began jabbing his finger towards nearby landmarks. ‘See, Cairo Tower. El Tahrir Bridge, up there 26 July Bridge. Gezira island. Sheraton Hotel.’ The last was a hideous cylinder on the tip of a tongue of land opposite.

‘No, really? Amazing.’

He jerked her wrist sharply and she stood upright, startled and defensive.

‘Watch it,’ Ruby snapped.

They faced each other, glaring. The breeze off the unfamiliar river was humid, and the sprawl of an unknown and hostile city stretched away on every side. Suddenly Ruby missed the clatter and roll of skateboarders under the concrete spans of the South Bank, and the smell of hot dogs, and all the damp, foggy chill of London. She heard Lesley’s voice and shut that off inside her head.

It was important not to piss Ash off because he was the only friend she had here.

But it was Ash who began laughing first.

‘You make a frown like a monkey,’ he told her.

She corrugated her face even more elaborately and crossed her eyes until they were both laughing. Then she nodded at the river. ‘It’s beautiful. I like the boats.’

‘One evening I take you sailing in a felucca. At sunset. Very romantic.’

‘Great. I’d rather that than the fucking museum.’

‘Ruby,’ he sighed.

‘Sorry. Gimme another brown?’

‘What?’

‘A ciggie. A cigarette, for God’s sake. I’ll buy some if you show me where, if that’s the problem.’

‘No problem,’ he said politely.

They began walking, their hands occasionally brushing together. Ruby noticed the top of a grand pillared building behind a high wall guarded by a couple of armed and uniformed men. She was surprised to see the Union flag hanging limply from a central flagpole.

‘What’s that place?’

He shrugged. ‘British embassy.’

‘Oh.’ Ruby wasn’t very interested.

They passed beneath a huge, ancient-looking tree, its trunk a mass of writhing tendrils for all the world like dun-coloured snakes. In its thick shade the air was almost cool.

‘Banyan tree.’

They stopped and looked up into the canopy of coarse leaves. Taxis cruised and honked a few feet away, a couple of passers-by glanced incuriously at them. Ash’s throat was smooth, his skin pale brown. Ruby stepped up close, put her hands behind his head and pulled his mouth down to hers. She kissed him hard, flicking her tongue between his lips.

She saw the flash of dismay and disbelief in his eyes before he stepped sharply backwards.

‘Why you do that?’ he demanded.

She had done it without thinking, just because she felt like it.

‘Didn’t you like it?’

He had liked it, of course, but it was not what he had planned.

Ash had intended to make a play for the English girl, that went without saying, but he had expected to chase her until she was cornered and when she finally gave way the triumph would all have been his. Now she had taken the initiative and he felt diminished. He had no idea what to expect next.

They were now both aware of the breadth of experience and expectation that separated them, and they were uncomfortable.

‘You have boyfriends,’ Ash said flatly.

Ruby tried to give a careless laugh, but it came out sounding harsh.

‘Yeah. What do you expect? Yes, I do. Have had.’

He nodded. ‘I see.’

She didn’t like his disapproval and tried to startle him back into sympathy with her. ‘No, you don’t. My boyfriend died. In an accident.’

Ash’s eyes were very dark brown and the whites were so white they looked blue.

‘What? Accident in a car?’

‘No. He fell. He fell off the balcony of someone’s flat. It was late at night, a party. He had been drinking and taking stuff. I didn’t see how he fell. Maybe he jumped, I don’t know. He was a bit fucked up. His name was Jas.’

Ash shook his head. This information was almost too much for him, but he took her hand gently and led her a few steps to a bench facing the river wall. They sat down with their backs to the traffic and stared at the ugly cylinder hotel across the water.

‘Did you love him, this Jas? Did he love you?’

He asked this so simply and tenderly, and his directness seemed to flick a switch in Ruby. She almost heard the click. Without any warning tears welled up in her eyes and poured down her face, scalding her cheeks as they ran.

‘Maybe. Yes. It wasn’t like you think.’

‘I think nothing,’ Ash said.

Ruby knuckled her eyes and sniffed hard. She tried not to cry, as a general rule. Not about Jas, or anything else. She usually tried not to think about Jas being dead either, except as a bare fact, but now she couldn’t stop the thoughts – or the images that came with them.

The flat had been on the ninth floor of a stumpy tower block on the edge of a no man’s land of railway sidings and warehouses with broken windows that looked like cartoon eyes in the darkness. It was a rain-smeared late night that had begun in a pub with Jas and some of his friends, and ended in a boxy room with a couple of mattresses on the floor. There were quite a lot of people in the flat. Not the ones who had been there at the beginning, they had melted away and different faces had bobbed up. Two girls had been arguing about the music that was raggedly playing, and one of them had snatched a CD and flung it at the wall. Her boyfriend had given her a shaking and her head wobbled disconcertingly. When he pushed her away from him she fell sideways on one of the mattresses.

Ruby was sitting on the other, with her knees drawn up to her chest like a shield. She had been wanting to go home for a while, or at least somewhere that wasn’t this place, and wondering how to negotiate an exit. She was dimly aware that Jas had moved away but she felt too out of it herself to pay any attention to what he might be doing. The next thing was a shout, and a ripple of movement in the room that pushed the girl on the next mattress into a sitting position and sent several others stumbling towards the door onto a balcony.

Ruby found herself walking towards the door. Cold air blew towards her, and the few steps seemed to take a long time. There were one or two voices, high-pitched with alarm, but most of all she could hear a huge silence. She knew at once that something very bad had happened.

The balcony was small. There was a flowerpot in a corner with the brown stalks of a dead plant sticking up, and a scatter of cigarette butts and roaches. The walls were brick, topped with gritty stone. A white-faced bloke was holding on to the stone as if he was on a ship in a bad storm, and a girl was half turned away with her hand over her mouth. Ruby walked very slowly to the wall and looked over.

A long way down, Jas was lying on his side with his head and his arms and his legs all at weird angles. There was a dark pool spreading round his head. He was dead. Just in one glance you could tell that much.

The girl took her hand from her mouth and started to babble.

‘I just saw his feet and legs going. His shoe caught on the edge. I wasn’t looking, I just sort of turned. I saw his legs and his feet, falling.’

The sick-looking man put his arms round her. ‘OK,’ he said. Ruby wondered why, when it wasn’t OK at all.

‘Who is he?’ someone else muttered. She realised now that she hadn’t set eyes on any of these people before tonight. Jas had been her connection. He made friends easily, but never tried to keep them. They had drifted along together, Ruby and he, without asking themselves or each other any questions.

When the police arrived, there wasn’t much she could tell them. It was that that shocked her, really. She knew his name, and the address of the house where he squatted. He came from Sunderland, and he liked curry and Massive Attack. He had made her a CD compilation and decorated the insert with red biro swirls.

It wasn’t very much. It wasn’t very much for a life that was now over.

The police drove her back from the police station to Will and Fiona’s house in Camden. It was already light and people were going to work in their neat clothes. A policewoman offered to come in with her and explain what had happened but Ruby shook her head. She scrambled out of the car as quickly as she could and bolted inside. She hoped that no one would be awake yet so she could slide into her bedroom without being seen.

But Will was up. He was coming down the stairs, wearing a suit and a blue shirt and a dark-red tie, his cheeks and jaw shiny from his morning shave. In the kitchen there were kids’ drawings on the pinboard and a bunch of flowers in a milkjug on the table, the same as yesterday.

‘Fi’s still asleep. Where have you been all night?’

He was in a position to ask the question because he was her stepfather’s brother, so she was part family as well as part lodger. But they were also conspirators because when they were alone Will didn’t always treat her like family. Or at least, the way families were supposed to treat each other. Ruby thought he was rather pathetic, but she had taken advantage of the situation in the past. Being in a conspiracy with Will meant she could get away with things that he and Fiona, as a fully united front, would never have allowed.

But not any longer. Not after this night.

She blinked, and her eyes burned with the image of Jas lying at the foot of the stumpy high-rise.

‘Um. I went to a party.’

Will looked angry, in his plump way.

‘What are you like? What sort of behaviour do you call this? It’s five to six in the morning and you’re supposed to go to college today.’

Ruby glanced away, down at the floor. She was thinking if she could just get away quickly, upstairs to her bedroom, she could keep all the spinning and churning bits of misery inside and not let Will see them.

‘I know,’ she mumbled. ‘Sorry.’

He sighed. Then he came round the table and took hold of her. He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face so he could examine it. She felt too numb to break away from him, or to do anything but stand there. Will sighed again and then his hand slid over her bottom but he gently pushed her away at the same time, as if it were she who had come on to him. He was very good at making things appear the opposite of what they really were. A long time ago – yesterday – she used to think it must be one of the number of things he had a first-class degree in.

But there was no place this morning for any of those old notions. They seemed to belong to a different person.

‘Go on, then. Go upstairs and get into bed, before Fi catches you. I’ve got to get to the airport.’

He was fussing with his briefcase, snapping the locks.

Ruby went up the stairs, very slowly. Her feet felt as if they had rocks tied to them.

In her bedroom she took off her clothes and then stood holding them in a bundle against her chest, very tightly, as if she were hugging a baby. She even made a little crooning noise, out loud, and the disembodied sound made her jump. When she buried her face in the clothes she realised that they stank of sweat and smoke and sick. She had thrown up in a green-painted toilet cubicle at the police station.

She put the bundle down on the velvet-upholstered button-backed chair and covered it with a cushion. Then she crawled under the bedcovers and pulled them over her.

As soon as she closed her eyes he was lying there with the black puddle spreading round his head.

She told Ash briefly about Jas. It wasn’t right, she realised as soon as she had begun, to use it as a way of getting his sympathy. Then she gave him a flat smile. Her tears were drying up, leaving her eyes feeling sticky in the heat.

‘Anyway,’ she said, and shrugged. She stood up quickly, pulling at her clothes where they were glued to her skin. After a second he got up too, still looking at her with gentle concern.

‘That is very sad. I am sorry,’ he said. ‘What would you like to do now? Do you want to go back to your grandmother’s house?’

She didn’t want to cry again, for one thing, didn’t even want to think about crying. It was all too dangerous.

‘Can we just go on with what we were doing before?’

They walked on, under the dusty leaves, in and out of patches of shade. Ash waited for what she would do or say next.

‘Don’t you have a girlfriend?’

He considered carefully. ‘Of course, there are some girls I like. But it is not quite the same thing, I think.’

His solemnity made Ruby laugh. She still wanted to make him like her and the wish surprised her.

‘It was only a quick kiss, back there, you know? I just did it, I thought it would be nice. Sorry if it was totally the wrong thing. I get things wrong all the time, it’s the way I am. You’ll have to get used to it if we’re going to be friends. That was one of the good things about Jas. He kind of didn’t mind anything. He’d say things like, we are each the person we are and we should try to be that person to the full, not someone else. I liked that a lot.’

Ash stopped again. He looked over his shoulder at the traffic and at the passers-by, then he steered Ruby into an angled niche in the river wall where an ornate street lamp sprouted.

‘I would like to kiss you, now, please.’

She leaned back. The stone was hot against her ribs and spine.

‘Go on, then.’

‘Wait. To me, these things have importance. They are not just a quick this, or for nothing that. Perhaps you think to be this way is funny?’

‘No,’ Ruby said humbly. ‘I think it’s lovely.’

‘All right.’ He came nearer. Close up, there were all kinds of different textures and colours visible in the dark-brown irises.

He kissed her, an experimental meeting of mouths that seemed, to Ruby, very tentative. Then he pulled back again.

‘Good,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’

Feeling rather pleasingly chaste, she resumed her walk at his side. After a little way they turned aside from the river and wandered through a quiet area of curving streets with enclosed gardens thick with greenery. It was much quieter here. The tall brown and cream buildings looked sleepy and well-protected. Some of the gates had guards in little wooden sentry boxes, or stationed in chairs on the pavement where they could watch everyone who went by. Ash and Ruby let their hands brush more often as they walked.

‘This is Garden City. Nice place, for rich people.’

‘Where do you live? Is it near here?’

Ash laughed, a little awkwardly.

‘What do you think? It is not like this, my home.’

‘I don’t know anything about Cairo.’

‘I will show you.’

Later they came out alongside the river again. An island, separated from the mainland only by a narrow channel, lay directly opposite. Ash told her it was called Rhoda, pointing out the landmarks and telling her little pieces of history. Ruby nodded dutifully. They had been walking for a long time and the sky was already fading from blue to pale grey. There were more feluccas with their sails like birds’ wings on the water.

‘It’s time I went back,’ she said.

They turned north, walking towards the Tahrir Bridge. When they reached the place where Ash had left the bike, lights were beginning to twinkle on the bridges and the buildings across the river. The sunset sky was streaked with gold and pale green.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Ruby sighed.

Ash took her arm. ‘I have an idea. A special, very special Cairo view, just for you. You have to tell a small lie, but I think you can do that?’

She gave him a warning look. ‘Maybe.’

He was marching her through the torrent of traffic and through a gateway into some gardens. A huge hotel with hundreds of balconies and lit-up windows loomed over them, and a line of shiny cars snaked up to the doors.

‘You stay in places like this?’

‘I have done,’ she admitted.

‘So you know what to do.’

As the revolving door disgorged them into a glass-and-marble lobby, a doorman in a tarboosh and white baggy trousers worn with a sash and a red waistcoat stepped in front of them.

‘I am staying in the hotel. Room 806,’ Ruby said firmly.

‘Good evening,’ he murmured and stepped back again.

Heads up, they walked past the brocade armchairs and the fountain to the lifts. Ash was chuckling.

‘Are we nicking something?’ she demanded as the lift doors closed.

‘What is that?’

‘Stealing.’

‘Of course not. A view is free, belonging to everyone.’

They swept up to the top floor and stepped out into a mirrored lobby. There was a murmur of voices, tinkling piano music and glasses.

‘Please close your eyes,’ Ash ordered.

He took her hand and led her from carpet to paving. They were outside again, with a breeze fanning Ruby’s face. A little spasm of fear ran down her spine as she wondered how close the edge was.

‘You are safe,’ Ash breathed in her ear. He steered her a few more steps, then halted. ‘Now, open.’

She looked. They were in a garden on the roof of the hotel. Below them, far below, was the dusk-blue higgledy-piggledy mass of Cairo. Lights shone in the crowded tower blocks, chains of traffic lights blinked and neon signs flashed all the way to the western horizon. The sun had set but the sky was blazing gold and orange.

‘Do you see?’ Ash murmured. His arm was round her shoulders, she could smell his skin.

‘Yes.’ She thought he meant just the view. But then, at the exact point where the dusty glitter of the city met the fiery sky, she saw three sharp triangular cut-outs pasted against the glow. ‘Oh.’

Ruby leaned forward, hands on the rooftop rail, taking in her first glimpse of the Pyramids. They looked so close, almost part of the city itself. It made her think of how these buildings and domes and streets had crept from the banks of the Nile all the way out into the desert. She had always imagined the Pyramids surrounded by empty seas of sand, but seeing them like this made them seem even stranger and more unreal.

‘You like it?’

‘Yes. I like it very much.’

The sky was fading. The pianist in the rooftop bar played more loudly and guests in evening dress drifted out to look at the view.

‘We have to go,’ Ash muttered. A man in a black tailcoat headed briskly towards them.

‘Hello.’ Ruby grinned at him.

‘I am afraid this is a private party, Madam.’

‘Sorry. Lost our way. We’re just leaving.’

As they reached the lobby a waiter carrying a silver tray of drinks passed them and with a smooth movement, flashing him a smile at the same time, Ruby helped herself to a tall glass. In the lift, they leaned back against the padded wall. The glass was beaded with condensation, decorated with a straw and mint and rattling with chunks of ice. She handed it with a flourish to Ash. He gave it a longing stare and then the day’s thirst overcame him. He sucked down two-thirds of the Coca-Cola with a single swallow, then politely handed the glass back to Ruby.

‘No. It’s all for you,’ she told him.

Outside again, it was night-time. Darkness descended here like a curtain falling.

Hand in hand, Ruby and Ash walked back to the bike. She felt quite comfortable this time, sitting close up to Ash with her arms tight round his waist, as they swooped through the traffic on the way home.

He stopped where Nafouz had drawn up in the taxi, only forty-eight hours ago.

‘Thank you for a nice day,’ Ruby said, realising with a shock just how long she had been out.

He touched her cheek with his fingers.

‘I will come again?’

‘Yeah. I mean yes, I’d like you to.’

‘I am your Cairo boyfriend?’

When Nafouz made the same suggestion she had laughed at him. But Ash’s wanting to set out the terms in this way made Ruby feel modest, and also shy in a way that she hadn’t done since she was twelve.

‘If you want to be.’ I am blushing, she realised.

He leaned over and kissed her in the same tentative way. As if she might break.

‘How will I hear from you?’ she asked.

His eyes widened. ‘I will be here. I find you.’

‘See you, then.’

She rapped hard on the sun-blistered door of Iris’s house, and heard Ash accelerating away.

The door swung open.

At the sight of her Mamdooh moved fast. He propelled Ruby into the house and locked the door, dropping the key out of sight in the pocket of his galabiyeh.

‘Miss. You have been away many hours.’

‘Sorry. I …’

‘Sorry not good enough. You make Mum-reese worry, Auntie worry, and myself.’

He was breathless with anger.

‘I …’

‘Cairo people not bad, but you are young woman, know nothing. Some places dangerous for you.’

He didn’t know anything either, Ruby thought. She couldn’t deal with being treated as if she were ten years old. London wasn’t a safe place, but she knew how to look after herself. She was here, wasn’t she? It was Jas who had gone under, Jas who was kind and friendly to everyone, and just a bit fucked up.

Auntie came down the inner staircase and darted straight at Ruby. Ruby braced herself for another rebuke, but Auntie took her hands and lifted them, pressing the knuckles to her own mouth. Her eyes were almost hidden in the fans of wrinkles but there were tears at the corners. Awkwardly, Ruby detached one of her hands and put it on Auntie’s shoulder. She was so small, it was like comforting a child.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Ruby began.

She had said the same words often enough before, but Auntie’s tears made her feel something different. Or maybe it was remembering Jas, or all the impressions of the day piling up inside her. Without warning she started crying again herself, beginning with a dry sob and then with her face puckering and the tears breaking out as if something hard had burst inside her.

Instantly, Auntie gathered her in her arms. She held Ruby like an infant, murmuring in Arabic and patting her hands and rubbing her arms. Mamdooh put a very big, clean and folded handkerchief into her hand.

‘You have had trouble today? Someone has tried to hurt you?’

‘No, no. I made a friend. His name is Ashraf, his brother is the taxi driver, and he … he works in the Bab al-Futuh Hospital. He showed me Garden City and a view of the Pyramids from the top of a hotel. I didn’t mean to stay out so long. How is my grandmother? What did the doctor say?’

Auntie said something in Arabic and Mamdooh nodded.

‘She is resting.’

‘Can I go up and see her?’

The old people held her between them now, one on either side.

‘First you must have food. After, you can take some tea for her. It is better you are not crying.’

Ruby understood the sense of that. And the breakfast of two eggs she had eaten in Khan al-Khalili was a long time ago.

The kitchen was quite cosy in the light from a pair of oil lamps, and there was a good smell of food. Ruby noticed how Mamdooh and Auntie moved between the table and a wood-fired oven as wordlessly as if they were part of the same organism. Mamdooh laid out spoons and three brown bowls, Auntie brought out a blackened pot from the oven. Flat bread was laid on a wooden platter, and coarse salt in a smaller bowl. They must have lived and worked together for so many years they didn’t need to discuss anything, certainly not to make bargains and score points the way Lesley and Andrew or Will and Fiona endlessly did.

They all sat down together. Ruby reached for the bread at once, then realised that the two old people were watching her, waiting for something. She wondered blankly what it could be, and then it struck her. She cast about in her mind. Her first school, the first of many, had been a Church primary. ‘Forwhatweareabouttoreceive,’ she mumbled, ‘maytheLordmakeustrulythankful.’

This seemed to fit the bill. They were being respectful of her religion. Mamdooh nodded gravely, then lifted the lid off the pot.

It had been quite a day, one way and another, Ruby thought. She had been kissed as if she had been playing Spin the Bottle at a kids’ party, and she had said grace.

Mamdooh noticed the smile that transformed her. ‘That is better. Now please eat some of this very good food.’

It was good. Chick peas and tomatoes, and some thick but tender meat. In reply to Mamdooh’s questions she told them a little about Ash and where they had spent the day.

Afterwards, Ruby carried the plates to the big old sink and Auntie showed her how they were to be washed and dried, and where to put them away.

Mamdooh prepared a tray. There was the little silver teapot and a bunch of fresh mint leaves, sugar and a glass cup in a worn silver holder. There was also a medicine bottle, a glass and some pills.

‘You like to come up now, Miss, to Mum-reese?’

‘Please call me Ruby, you know? Shall I carry that?’

‘It is for me to do, thank you.’

Ruby said goodnight to Auntie, who wrapped her arms round her again and showed her few remaining teeth in a wide smile. Ruby guessed that they had both forgiven her.

The lamp was on beside Iris’s bed, but the rest of the room was dim. Her eyes had been closed, but as soon as Mamdooh came in with Ruby behind him she opened them. At first, the expression was blank. If there was anything in the depths, it was bewilderment. But then Iris saw Ruby. Her lips moved and she tried to sit up against the pillows.

‘There you are,’ she said.

How long have I been ill this time?

I have had the lurid, monstrous dreams of a high fever, but not so many of them. I am sure it was only this morning that the doctor came, the young Frenchman called Nicolas Grosseteste. His senior partner was my doctor for many years, although I rarely needed his opinion. But poor Alphonse is dead now and Doctor Nicolas is capable enough, in his superior way. He thinks I am old and frail, but I am not quite as frail as he believes. I have had malaria and another bout would probably finish me off, but it is not malaria this time. My immune system is weakened from many years of living in equatorial climates and I am susceptible to fevers. But I feel better tonight. Seeing the child makes me feel better.