Outside the New Moon Cabaret Café, at two o’clock in the morning, the winking neon cast regular patterns of light and shade on the ranks of parked bicycles, and on the relatively few cars that...

“Dearest Andy, I do wish there was time to tell you how grateful I am to you for everything, how fond I am of you, how much I’m going to miss you. I wish I...

A small noise awoke Andrew in the night. He looked towards Madeleine’s bed and saw that she was standing beside it, her body white in the moonlight that came through the net curtains. He said...

Torbock was a large red-faced man, in his early forties, with a generous but straggly moustache. He looked as though the heat bothered him. ‘Do come in,’ Madeleine said. ‘We had your message. I’m Madeleine...

‘Have you heard anything from David lately?’ ‘I had a letter last week.’ ‘Anything of interest?’ ‘Not really. Quite apart from the censorship, he’s not a good letter writer. He’s frank in speech and reticent...

‘I saw your interview on the rushes.’ ‘Yes, I thought that might have something to do with your dropping in.’ He sipped the Scotch, feeling it tingle, familiar and unfamiliar, against his tongue. ‘For which...

The man who had accosted him was a Nigerian, in immaculate white drill; he was about twenty-five, tall, heavy-boned, his skin gleaming with health and assurance. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘May I have your...

‘Ituno’s jolly nice,’ the smaller boy said. ‘No swank about him at all. And he’s a Chief’s son.’ ‘So is Akki,’ the other said. ‘He’s invited me to stay with him in the next hols....

Her gaze had turned from the roof to the nearest wall, and his own followed it. She was looking at one of the plates torn from the Swiss calendar. It was a colour photograph of...

Madeleine spoke for the first time since they had come into the shack. She said: ‘Where does one get water?’ ‘Why, child, there’s a tap right at the end of the street. You don’t have...