The Lost Letter from Morocco. Adrienne Chinn

you. She brought me the crêpes for breakfast. They were delicious.’

      ‘Never mind, Adi. I took some already this morning from the kitchen. Even if she say no, I take them anyway. Nobody can say no to me.’

      ‘Oh, really?’

      ‘It’s true.’

      ‘Maybe one day I’ll say no to you.’

      Omar steps out onto the veranda. ‘It’s impossible.’

      ‘Why’s it so impossible?’

      The dimple appears in his cheek. ‘Because I’m so charming.’

      Addy smiles as she reaches for her camera and loops the strap around her neck. ‘Que sera sera.’

      ‘What you said?’

      ‘What will be, will be. It’s Latin.’

      Omar nods. ‘It’s like fate. Even so, you’ll never say no to me. I’m sure about it.’

      Half an hour later, Addy’s on the old iron bridge, stepping carefully over the loose wooden boards. Resting the tripod against an iron girder, she leans her elbows on the rusting railing and watches the river sliding past, underneath her feet. She can see through the clear water to the pebbles and stones on the sandy bottom. It’s still early, and the village boys haven’t yet congregated on the riverbanks to dive and swim in the cool water. Only boys, never girls. The girls are in their homes, Addy guesses, helping with the cooking and cleaning. Being dutiful while the boys have all the fun.

      Addy gazes up the hill towards the mosque’s thick minaret. A sheep’s carcass hangs from a hook in front of the butcher’s stall next door to the new concrete tower. The butcher leans against a bamboo post holding up an awning constructed from an old Méditel hoarding advertising cell phones. He swats at the flies buzzing around the carcass with a goat tail.

      Leaning her chin in her hand on the rusted iron railing, Addy watches three women carry baskets of laundry down a path to the river. They stop at a flat rock, set down their baskets, and tuck the hems of their skirts and aprons into their pyjama bottoms. They roll their pyjamas over their knees and lay out T-shirts on the rock. A tall, slender, black-skinned woman showers the shirts with a snowy sprinkling of laundry detergent. When the T-shirts are sufficiently soap-laden, the women wade out into the river and dunk the shirts into the water. They scrub and pummel the cloth until Addy feels her own knuckles burn.

      Fatima and her friend, Zaina, emerge, chatting and laughing, from the shadows of the olive trees, carrying brightly coloured plastic baskets spilling over with clothes. Addy waves at them, calling out Fatima’s name. Fatima smiles and waves back. Zaina stares up at Addy, the humour erasing from her pretty face.

      Addy leans back against the rail and inhales the fresh spring air with a deep breath. So Zaina doesn’t like her. So what? But the others – Aicha, Jedda, Fatima, Omar … Why do the people here touch her in a way no one in London touches her? Certainly not Philippa, who loves to play the role of her disapproving and long-suffering older sister. She loves Philippa, of course. She’s her sister. She just doesn’t like her very much most of the time.

      And Nigel? Addy tries to dredge up the memory of her ex-fiancé, but his face is like a puzzle whose pieces she can’t quite fit together. Nigel got close. She’d let her guard down because he could make her laugh with his dry humour. Then he’d left her heart as torn and bloodied as the raccoon she’d once seen caught in a hunter’s trap in the Québec woods. Another selfish man. Wrapped up in his career. What did Philippa say? Always falling for inaccessible men. Selfish and inaccessible. Just like her father.

      ‘Adi!’ Omar waves at her from the road leading down from the car park.

      She watches him stride down the dusty road, trailed by a crowd of sunburnt tourists in floppy sun hats and baseball caps, cameras bumping on their chests. Despite herself, her heart flutters.

      Omar points out the donkeys tethered to the olive trees, saying something she can’t hear. The tourists laugh. In his turban, Omar towers over them. As he approaches, she follows the line of his neck to the point where it meets his angular jaw. The soft spot just under his jaw where she’d kissed him last night, in the moonlight on her veranda. She remembers his quiet moan, and her cheeks flush. But that was before she came to her senses. Retreating back into her shell, like a turtle hiding from the world.

      ‘Everybody, this is a tourist lady who’ll join us for the tour.’

      Addy waves at the group. A few middle-aged European couples and a clique of Spanish students. The girls flick their eyes over her. She’s of no interest to the boys. Omar collects her tripod and tucks it under his arm. He heads through the olive grove to the river path. Addy follows at the rear of the group, just like the first time.

      Omar stops on the riverbank by the women washing clothes. The tourists congregate around him and snap photos of the toiling women.

      ‘This is the manner we do wash the clothes in the village.’

      ‘So, it’s only the women who are clean, then?’

      Omar snaps his head around and stares at Addy. The dimple appears in his cheek. A Scottish man asks him a question, but Omar doesn’t answer. The man repeats his question. Omar shakes his head as if to wake up.

      ‘I’m sorry. I been sleeping.’

      The group trails Omar through the twisting trunks of the olive trees, past the lookout by Yassine’s café. Rather than heading to the bottom of the waterfalls where the rafts bob in the pool, Omar veers right onto a different path. He stops in front of a red mud wall of petrified tree roots. He stumbles over his words, forgetting his English.

      The path leads to a pool of clear water fed by mini-waterfalls. Addy peers down the river towards sun-baked canyon walls in the distance and sees half a dozen pools, feeding lazily into each other, veiled by pink oleander bushes and branches of the old olive trees on the riverbanks. The freshness of the early morning has succumbed to a dry heat and sweat trickles down her neck. She fans herself with her hat.

      Omar leans her tripod against the grey trunk of an olive tree and leaps onto a rock in the pool.

      ‘Everybody, it’s very, very hot even if it’s not summer yet. So, you can swim if you would like. We will stay here thirty minutes. It’s very safe, no problem. The water is very clean. Enjoy.’

      The older tourists roll up their trousers and Bermuda shorts and wade cautiously into the water. The Spanish students strip off their clothes in a burst of Latin enthusiasm, revealing surfing shorts and bikinis. They clamber across the rocks to the mini-waterfalls and leap into the pool, screaming as they slam into the cold water. The girls are tanned and slim in their bikinis. Addy runs her hand along the waist of her jeans, conscious of her white skin and the roundness of her belly, hips and breasts under her clothes.

      Omar laughs and shouts at the Spanish boys as he unwinds his tagelmust. He jumps back to the riverbank and loops the blue cloth around Addy’s waist.

      ‘So, I capture you, Adi.’ He leans over and plants a quick kiss on her lips.

      A Spanish boy shouts out a catcall. Omar answers him in Spanish, putting off the boy’s timing, and he belly-flops into the pool. The boy’s friends erupt into peals of glee.

      ‘What did he say?’

      ‘He say I am a robber of the ladies. I tell him I am the robber of one lady only.’ Omar laughs. ‘I tell him he have to make a good dive because all the Spanish ladies watch him. So, he is nervous and he made a bad dive.’

      The students’ carefree spirits are infectious and Addy ignores the alarm going off in her head.

      ‘What are you going to do now that you’ve trapped me? Carry me off?’

      ‘It’s so, so hot, darling. There’s no way for me to carry you.’

      ‘Maybe you’d like one of the Spanish girls instead. They’ve been eyeing you.’