Iris and Ruby: A gripping, exotic historical novel. Rosie Thomas

was a thick stew of lamb with beans and tomato, and we sat turned towards each other on our bank of cushions and devoured it. I tore up chunks of bread and mopped the spicy sauce, then Xan took hold of my wrist and licked my fingers clean for me. He kissed each knuckle in turn and I noticed how his hair grew in different directions at the crown of his head. This tiny detail, more than anything else, made me want to touch him. And want him to touch me. I was almost frightened by how much I wanted it.

      ‘Who is Hassan?’ I asked. ‘What is this place?’

      ‘We played together when we were boys. His father taught me to ride. Now we work together, if you understand what I mean. Hassan knows the desert better than anyone else in

      Egypt.’

      One of Xan’s eyebrows lifted as he told me this.

      ‘Work’, I guessed, would probably be for one of the secret commando raiding groups that operated between and behind enemy lines. In my months with Roddy Boy I had glimpsed a few reports of their missions.

      ‘That’s very dangerous, isn’t it?’

      ‘This is a war.’

      Both statements were true. There was nothing either of us could add, so we just looked at each other in the candlelight.

      Then Xan leaned forward. ‘I’m here now,’ he whispered. ‘We are here.’

      I put my hand to his head as he kissed me, drawing him closer, and the whorl of unruly hair felt springy under the flat of my hand.

      ‘We weren’t going to talk about the war,’ I said at last.

      ‘It would be a mistake to do so. It would be a mistake of profound dimensions. It would even be a blunder of historic proportion and therefore I candidly advise against it. Most certainly I advise against it.’

      I spluttered with surprised laughter. The voice was Roddy Boy’s, his plump circumlocutions captured to perfection.

      ‘And I concur. What’s more, the ambassador agrees with me.’

      This time it was Sandy Allardyce’s faintly self-important drawl. I laughed even harder. Xan was an excellent mimic.

      ‘Good.’ Xan smiled. ‘That’s better.’ He knelt upright and rummaged among the dishes. ‘What have we got here?’

      There was a glazed bowl of dates, and a little dish of plump shelled almonds. He made me open my mouth and popped the food in piece by piece.

      ‘Stop. I’ll explode.’

      In an old Thermos flask there was strong black coffee, and when everything else was finished we drank that from our tin mugs. I saw Xan glance at his watch and I felt a cold draught at the back of my neck. I shivered a little and immediately he put his arm round me.

      ‘Hassan and I have to leave again very early in the morning. I’ll take you home now.’

      I smiled at him, pushing the meaning of tomorrow out of my thoughts, then leaned forward and gave him a lingering kiss. It took a serious effort of will to pull back again.

      ‘That was the very best evening of my life,’ I said.

      ‘Was it? Do you mean that?’

      Once again, his eagerness touched my heart.

      ‘I do.’

      ‘There will be more,’ he promised. ‘Hundreds, no, thousands more. A lifetime of evenings, and mornings and nights.’

      I touched my fingers to his lips, stalling him for now. I couldn’t ask where he was going, or when he would be back. All I could do was to send him off with the certainty that I would wait for him.

      We blew out the candles together and untied the tent flap. We stood side by side and looked across to the Pyramids. And then we turned away from the tent and the view, and walked back hand in hand to the tiny oasis. The men who had been sitting around the fire were gone and the fire itself had burned down to a heap of ash with a heart of dull red embers. Hassan was waiting for us, sitting with his back against the trunk of a palm tree.

      We drove back into the City. At the door to the apartment Xan touched my face. ‘I will be back soon,’ he promised.

      ‘I will be here,’ I said.

      My eyes hurt from staring into the darkness.

      My body aches, deep in the bones, and I am shivering as if with a fever. A little while ago I heard the child wandering about, but the street outside and the house are silent now. She must have fallen asleep. I long for the same but instead there is the patchy, piebald mockery of recall, and fear of losing even that much.

      Always fear. Not of death, but of the other, a living death.

      I think of Ruby’s offer to help me, innocent and calculating, and instead of finding her interesting I am suddenly overwhelmed with irritation, discomfort at the invasion of my solitude, longing for peace and silence.

      The shivering makes my teeth rattle.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      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