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Belgravia.”
    Louisa bit her lip to hide a wry smile. Trying to look suitably chastened, she allowed the woman to help her on with her black silk gown and pin her hair up in loose ringlets and loops around her head beneath a black lace veil. At least without the weight of her customary chignon, it was cooler. The assurance that Jane Treece would not be going with her to visit the Valley of the Tombs had cheered her up enormously.
    The main saloon of the boat was as exotic as her own cabin, but the silver and china laid on the table for dinner was English. The food itself, though, was Egyptian, and delicious. Louisa ate with enjoyment as she tried to explain to the Forresters why she wanted to paint the Egyptian scenery. Augusta Forrester had emerged from her own quarters looking as elegant and cool as if she were entertaining at home in London. A small, silver-haired woman in her early sixties with huge dark eyes, she had managed to retain a prettiness of feature and a charm which made her immediately attractive. Her attention span was, though, Louisa discovered quickly, very short.
    “When Mr. Shelley died,” she explained as they ate, “I found myself lost.” How could she ever tell them how lost without her beloved George? She had contracted the same fever which had killed her husband, and although she had recovered, it had left her too weak and too listless to care for her two robust and noisy sons. They had gone to stay with George’s mother, and Louisa had been persuaded finally that a few months in a hot climate would restore her to health. She and George had planned to come to Egypt one day. It was George who had regaled her with stories of the discoveries that were being made in the sands of the desert. It was George who had promised that one day they would go there and that she would paint the temples and tombs. The somewhat unconventional household they ran with its laughter and conversation and the constant flow of painters and writers and travellers had fallen apart when illness had struck. George’s mother had arrived, nursed them both, taken away the children, dismissed half the servants, substituted her own, and left Louisa devastated.
    Glancing from Sir John to his wife, Louisa saw that the latter was no longer listening to her, but the mention of Augusta’s nephew, Edward, brought her back from her daydreams, and for a few minutes she sat, her beautiful dark eyes fixed on Louisa’s face, as her guest described how that young man, a friend of George’s, had rescued her, arranged her passage, booked the steamer from Cairo, and persuaded his uncle and aunt to take her to see the excavations. Without his help, she would have been destroyed.
    His uncle and aunt were, however, not quite as unconventional as their nephew, and she was finding out every minute that her dreams of conversation and laughter and the convivial travel which she and George had so often discussed were far from what the Forresters had in mind.

    Anna looked up. Her neighbour appeared to be asleep. Over the back of the seat in front of her she could see the film in full swing. Most of the passengers seemed to be engrossed in the action. Surreptitiously she tried to stretch and wondered how long she could last before she had to ask him to move so she could go to the loo. She glanced back towards the rear of the plane. The queue for the lavatories did not seem to have grown any shorter. Beyond the thick glass of the window, the distant ground had turned the colour of red and ochre and gold. The colours of Africa. With a tremor of excitement she stared down for a long time before leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes. She was almost there.
    It was impossible to sleep.
    She opened the diary again, eager to lose herself in Louisa’s adventures and blot out her own less than romantic mode of travel. Skimming down the cramped, slanted writing with its faded brown ink, she flipped through the pages, glancing at the sketches which