Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,46

until his trousers hung unpatched and feebly together in a web of white cotton. Pedro was still sleeping naked under his blanket when Mum sprang up and slapped us both, fast and sharp with the flat of her hand. Then she got back into bed and slept until it was nearly time for lunch.

By die time die Sufis arrived Pedro had forgiven us and his trousers were repatched and wearable again. The Sufis were two Americans on a pilgrimage to Algeria. They were on their way to visit the Zaouia, a mosque where the third Sufi sheikh, Sheikh Bentounes, lived.

As Akari’s hotel rooms were still unfinished, the American men were to sleep in the garden. Mum sat up with them. She had a thousand questions to ask. She wanted to learn the ritual breathing techniques they used in prayer. The two Americans agreed that it wasn’t something you could learn in a night and that if she was really interested she should go to the Zaouia and learn all these things for herself.

Mum’s eyes sparkled.

Pedro played sad songs on his guitar. His songs grew sadder and louder as the night wore on. Then they switched into his own language and took over the conversation.

I forced myself to stay awake, keeping a watchful eye on Mum, convinced that if I let my guard drop for even a moment, she would slip out of the garden and turn into a Sufi.

The Black Hand was a disembodied hand that travelled the world strangling its victims. The Black Hand left one clue on the necks of its victims. The sooty print of its thumb. I heard its tread on the stairs.

One. Thump. Silence.

Two. Thud. Still. Waiting stillness. Strangling quiet.

Three…

And then the rattle of the doorknob as it… as its fingers twisted… as the handle turned…

I woke up bathed in sweat.

The Sufis were gone and Mum was nowhere to be seen.

‘Mummeeeee!’ I wailed into the dark, my heart breaking. I sat on the doorstep and howled. ‘Mummeeeee!’

An irritable and sleepy voice grumbled from inside the room. ‘Oh please shut up, darling, and get back into bed.’ It was Mum.

Mum began to pray again, facing east on her mat. She practised yoga positions, including the lotus, and talked about a new adventure. The more restless she became the more Pedro enthused about spending the whole summer at Sid Zouin. Bea, having worked through to the last lesson in her book, said she should really be getting back to school, preferably in England. I thought about Bilal searching for us, wandering through the cafés, standing in the empty rooms of the Hotel Moulay Idriss. I practised tightrope walking on the garden wall, threw myself into handstands that were meant to turn into backflips but never did, and tried to pluck up the courage to extinguish the burning head of a match in my open mouth.

Bea and I sat in the taxi and waited for Mum and Pedro to say goodbye. They stood together in the arched doorway of the garden wall and held hands.

‘Come on,’ we whined at intervals.

Scott and Jeannie didn’t come to see us off. Jeannie hadn’t forgiven Mum for refusing to listen to her offers of advice. ‘That language will get them into trouble,’ she had warned and, ‘Children need discipline.’

‘I had plenty of discipline,’ Mum said, ‘and it didn’t do me any good.’

Pedro stood in the street and watched our car as it drove away. His face looked sad. Mum put her hand out of the side window and waved but she didn’t turn round.

As soon as Pedro was out of sight, she began to explain her plan: ‘We’ll stay in Marrakech for a few nights, wait for some money to arrive and then we’re off to Algiers to visit the Zaouia.’

‘What about school?’ Bea said.

‘And what about Bilal?’

‘If Bilal’s in Marrakech,’ Mum assured me, ‘we’ll be sure to find him.’

‘The Gnaoua might know, or the Fool,’ I suggested, ‘or the Nappy Ladies at the hotel.’

Moulay Idriss welcomed us with smiles of surprise, and tea, and explained there was not one spare room in the hotel. Not even for a night. The Nappy Ladies appeared in the doorway. They had seen us from the terrace of the second floor. Moulay Idriss invited them to join us in his abundantly cushioned room and drink a second glass of tea. Mum blushed. The crushed pink velvet of her favourite trousers were stretched tight to bursting over the legs of one of the ladies. Mum had