Iris and Ruby. Rosie Thomas

      This amused him. He laughed and slapped his hands on the steering wheel.

      The traffic began to move. There were roads everywhere, the sodium-lit elevated sections crazily perched over complex intersections, all hemmed in by drab concrete tower blocks and hung about with giant advertisement hoardings. The faces of huge women with black eyebrows and cows’ eyelashes mooned at each other over the street lamps. Every foot of road was clogged with hooting cars and trucks and big blue buses. The road signs were written in a code of squiggles and dots.

      Ruby lounged in the sagging seat and stared at it all. Her face was expressionless but inwardly she was fighting to maintain the defiance that had buoyed her up since leaving home. Now that she was actually here, she realised that she had hardly considered her destination. To get away and to stay away, that was what she had fixed on. But now all kinds of other problems reared up, competing with each other for her attention. She didn’t know how to handle this place, not at all. And nobody knew where she was; no one was looking out for her arrival. It was far from the first time in her life that she had been in the same situation, but never in quite such an alien setting.

      She felt a long way from home, but she bundled up that thought and pushed it aside.

      ‘How much?’ she demanded. She had changed the rest of her money into Egyptian pounds at the airport exchange. It made a reassuringly thick wad, which was why she had decided to splash out on a taxi. The thought of trying to find a bus had been too much to contemplate.

      The driver swung the wheel to overtake a donkey cart laden with saucepans and tin bowls that was plodding along the inner lane of the motorway. He shot the smile at her again.

      ‘Ah, money, no broblem. Where you from?’

      ‘London.’

      ‘Very nice place. David Beckham.’

      ‘Yeah. Or no. Whatever.’ At least they were moving now, presumably towards the city centre, wherever that might be. Airports were always miles away in the outer bloody suburbs, weren’t they?

      ‘My name Nafouz.’

      ‘Right.’

      There was a pause. Nafouz reached under the dash and produced a pack of Marlboro, half turned to offer it to her. Ruby hesitated. She had run out and she was longing for one.

      ‘Thanks.’ She lit it with her own Bic, ignoring his.

      ‘You have boyfriend in Cairo?’

      Ruby gave a snort of derisive laughter. ‘I’ve never been here in my life.’

      ‘I be your boyfriend.’

      She had hardly looked at him, except to notice his teeth, but now she saw the creases in the collar of his white shirt, and the way the inside of his black leather jacket dirtied the fabric in crooked ribs. His black hair was long, combed back from his face. Quite nice, really.

      She lifted her head. This, at least, was familiar territory. ‘In. Your. Dreams,’ she said clearly.

      Nafouz’s delighted laughter filled the car. He drummed his hands on the wheel as if this was the funniest joke he had ever heard.

      ‘I dream always. Dreaming cheap. Cost nothing at all.’

      ‘Just watch the road, all right?’

      She huddled in her corner, smoking and looking out at the wilderness. She had been abroad before, of course, with Lesley and Andrew to places like Tuscany and Kos and the Loire valley (how dull that one had been), but she had never seen anything like this steaming mess of concrete and metal. As they got nearer to what must be the middle of the city the traffic jam got even worse. There were long stationary intervals during which she peered down the side streets. There were tiny open-fronted shops with men sitting smoking at tin tables. Shafts of light came out of open doorways, shining on women with black shawls over their heads who sat on stone steps with children squirming around them. There were crates of globular shiny vegetables and crooked towers of coke cans, a thick litter of rubbish in the gutters, scrawny dogs nosing at it all. Men selling things from trays yelled on the street corners, other bent old men pushed hand barrows through the traffic. Neon lights blinked everywhere and there was the endless honking of horns.

      ‘Busy place,’ she said at last, wanting to make it smaller and less threatening with a casual phrase.

      Nafouz shrugged. ‘Who your friends here?’

      He was either being nosy, or he was concerned for her. Neither was welcome.

      ‘Family,’ she said discouragingly.

      They were winding down smaller streets now, leaving the main thoroughfares behind. Ruby glanced upwards and saw onion domes and tall thin towers pasted against dark-blue sky. The street was so narrow that there was only room for one car to pass. The women sitting on their steps lifted their heads and stared as the taxi slid by. There was one great dome just ahead, cutting an arc of sky, and a trio of thin spires that rose beside it.

      Nafouz stopped when he could go no further. The street had become a cobbled alley and it took a sharp-angled turn just in front of them. A stone pillar blocked the way. In the angle of a pale blank wall was a door with a small flight of stone steps leading up to it.

      ‘Here is place,’ Nafouz announced.

      Ruby stared at the door. She could just see that it was painted blue, old paint that had bubbled to expose wood split by the sun. She hadn’t at all worked out what to expect, but it wasn’t this. There was nothing here to give any clue to what or who might be inside.

      She summoned up her resolve.

      ‘Yeah. How much money d’you want?’ She opened up her nylon sack and her Discman and headphones and an apple and tubes of make-up rolled over the seat.

      ‘Fifty bounds.’

      ‘Fifty? D’you think I’m stupid or something? I’ll give you twenty.’ She opened her wallet and fumbled with torn filthy notes.

      ‘From airport, fifty.’ Nafouz wasn’t smiling any longer.

      ‘Get lost, right?’ Ruby gathered up her belongings and hopped out of the car but the driver was quicker. He ran round and held down the boot so she couldn’t retrieve her rucksack. They squared up to each other, faces inches apart.

      ‘Twenty-five,’ Ruby said.

      ‘Fifty.’

      ‘Give me my fucking bag.’ She kicked his shin as hard as she could. Unfortunately she was only wearing flipflops.

      Nafouz yelped. ‘Lady, lady. You are not behaving nicely.’

      ‘Really? Now hand over my bag.’

      ‘You pay first.’ But Nafouz was relenting. This tourist’s resistance earned a glimmer of his respect. Usually they just gave in and handed over the money. ‘Thirty,’ he conceded.

      ‘Fuck’s sake.’ But she sighed and took another note out of her purse, crumpling it and flinging it against the sleeve of his leather jacket. Nafouz’s smile was restored. Thirty Egyptian pounds was the going rate for a ride in from the airport.

      Ruby took her rucksack and hoisted it over her shoulder. With the wires of her headphones trailing and the contents of her other bag spilling in her arms she marched up the stone steps without a backward glance. She heard Nafouz reversing the car the way they had come, then a squeal of tyres as he raced away.

      As soon as he was gone she regretted the loss of even this brief relationship. Maybe she should have asked him to wait. What if there was nobody here? What if the address was wrong? Where would she go, in this city where she couldn’t even read the street signs?

      Then she lifted her head and straightened her shoulders again.

      There was no door knocker, nothing. She knocked on the blistered paint. There was a smell of dried piss in this alleyway, competing with all the other stinks.