Besides it’s only for three months. I’ve got to come back in the autumn anyway. As you know Mum’s not been well. She tells me the operation went fine and maybe it did or maybe she just doesn’t want me to worry. Either way I’ve got to come home eventually. (By the way, my mother has a theory about you and me, and if you meet me at the Taj Mahal I will tell you all about it, but only if you meet me.)

On the wall in front of me is this massive sort of praying mantis thing and he’s looking at me as if to say shut up now so I will. It’s stopped raining, and I’m about to go to a bar and meet up with some new friends for a drink, three female medical students from Amsterdam which tells you all you need to know.  But  on  the  way  I’m  going  to  find  a  post  box  and  send  this  before  I  change  my  mind.  Not because I think you coming here is a bad idea  –  it isn’t, it’s a great idea and you must come  –  but because I think I might have said too much. Sorry if this has annoyed you. The main thing is that I think about you a lot, that’s all. Dex and Em, Em and Dex. Call me sentimental, but　there’s no -one in the world that I’d like to see get dysentery more than you.

Taj Mahal, 1st August, 12 noon.

I will find you!

Love

D

. . .  and  then  he  stretched  and  scratched  at  his  scalp,  drained  the  last  of  his  beer  and picked the letter up, tapped the edges together and laid the stack solemnly in front of him. He shook the cramp from his hand; eleven pages written at great speed, the most he had written since  his  finals.  Stretching  his  arms  above  his  head  in  satisfaction  he  thought:  this  isn‘t  a letter, it‘s a gift.

He slid his feet back into his sandals, stood a little unsteadily and steeled himself for the communal showers. He was deeply tanned now, his great project of the last two years, the colour penetrating deep into his skin like a creosoted fence. With his head shaved very close to the skull by a street barber, he had also lost some weight but secretly liked the new look: heroically gaunt, as if he‘d just been rescued from the jungle.