crimson glass, a carved divan seat piled with cushions under a shuttered window. In a low cushioned chair with a padded footstool a very old woman was propped up with her eyes closed. A spilled glass lay on the kelim rug.
Ruby took a step forward and she opened her eyes.
Dream? Someone I used to know who was buried beneath the sand while I was looking elsewhere?
I am afraid of these spectres who loom up out of the past. I fear them because I can’t place them …
Fear makes me angry.
‘Mamdooh, who is this? What do you think you are doing? Don’t let people walk in here as if it’s a public library. Go away.’
The woman, apparition, whoever she is, doesn’t move.
Mamdooh kneels down, picks up the glass, puts it back on the tray. I can see the blotches on his old, bald skull. At once I feel sorry, and confused. I put my hand out to him and it’s shaking. ‘Forgive me. Who is she?’
The woman – very young, strange-looking – comes closer.
‘I’m Ruby.’
‘Who?’
‘Your granddaughter. Lesley’s daughter.’
‘You are not.’
Lesley’s daughter? A memory disinters itself. A pale, rather podgy child, dressed in a wool kilt and hairslides. Silent, yet somehow mutinous. Have I got that right?
‘Yes, I am. You are Granny Iris, my mother’s mother, Cairo Granny. Last time I saw you I was ten. You came for a holiday.’
I am tired. The effort of recall is too much. Poor Lesley, I think.
‘Does she know you are here?’
The child blinks. Now I look at her, I can see that she is hardly more than a child. She has made the effort to appear otherwise, with startling face paint and extraordinary metal rings and bolts driven into nose and ears, and with a six-inch slice of pale abdomen revealed between the two halves of her costume, but I would put her age at eighteen or nineteen.
‘Your mother. Does she know?’
‘No, actually.’
Her answer is deadpan but, to my surprise, the way she delivers it makes me want to smile. Mamdooh has picked up the tea glass, tidied the tray. Now he stands over me, a protective mountain.
‘Ma’am Iris, it is late,’ he protests.
‘I know that.’ To the child I say, ‘I don’t know why you are here, Miss. You will go straight back where you came from. I’m tired now, but I will speak to you in the morning.’
‘Shall I send Auntie to you?’ Mamdooh asks me.
‘No.’ I don’t want to be undressed and put to bed. I don’t want to reveal to the child that sometimes this happens. ‘Just get her to make up a bed for, for … what did you say your name is?’
‘Ruby.’
It’s a prostitute’s name, which goes well enough with her appearance. What was Lesley thinking?
‘A bed and some food, if she wants it. Thank you, Mamdooh. Good night, Ruby.’
The girl gives a sudden smile. Without the glower she looks even younger.
I make my way to my own room. When at last I am lying down with the white curtains drawn around the bed, the longing for sleep of course deserts me. I lie staring at the luminous folds of muslin, seeing faces and hearing voices.
Majestically disapproving, Mamdooh led Ruby downstairs again. A little old woman, about five feet tall, with a white shawl wrapped round her head and neck, appeared in the hallway. They spoke rapidly to each other.
‘You would like to eat some food?’ Mamdooh asked stiffly.
‘No, thanks very much. Had some on the plane.’
‘Go with Auntie, then.’
Ruby hoisted her luggage once more and followed the old woman up the enclosed stairs and through the shadowy galleries to a small room with a divan under an arched window. Auntie, if that was the name she went by, showed her a bathroom across the way. There was an overhead cistern with a chain, and the bowl was patterned with swirling blue and white foliage. There was an old-fashioned shower head as big as a dinner plate and a slatted wooden board over the drain, and a blue-painted chair with some folded towels.
‘Thank you,’ Ruby said.
‘Ahlan wa sahlan,’ Auntie murmured.
When she had gone, Ruby peeled off her clothes and dropped them on the floor. She got under the thin starched sheet just as she was, and fell instantly into a dreamless sleep.
‘No, no, don’t worry at all. I just wondered if she and Chloe might be together … Yes, of course. Is she? In Chile? How marvellous. Give her my best wishes, won’t you? Yes, that would be lovely. I’ll give you a call. ’Bye.’
Lesley replaced the receiver. ‘She’s not there either.’
Her neat leather address book lay open on the side table, but there were no more numbers left to try. She had been through them all and none of Ruby’s friends or their parents had seen her recently. None of Ruby’s friends who were also known to her mother, at least. There weren’t all that many of them.
Andrew was sitting in an armchair in a circle of lamplight, a pile of papers on his lap. A vee of wrinkles formed in the centre of his forehead as he stared at her over his reading glasses.
‘She’s nineteen. It’s really time she started taking responsibility for herself. You can’t stand in the firing line for her for ever.’
‘I don’t think I do,’ Lesley answered mildly. ‘Do I?’
Andrew exhaled sharply through his nose, pulling down the corners of his mouth to indicate disagreement without bothering to disagree, and resumed his reading.
Looking away from him, at the pleasant room that was arranged just how she wanted it, with the duck-egg blue shade of the walls that was restful without being cold and the cushion and curtain borders exactly matching it, Lesley felt anxiety fogging the atmosphere. Concern about Ruby distorted the room’s generous proportions and made it loom around her, sharp with threatening edges. The air itself tasted thin, as if she couldn’t draw enough of it into her lungs to make her heart beat steadily. Lesley knew this feeling of old, but familiarity never lessened the impact.
Where was Ruby? What was she doing this time, and who was she with?
One day, Lesley’s inner voice insisted, the unthinkable will happen. She shook her head to drive away the thought.
She
