MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS IN ALL THEIR GORY

Posted in Modern life, Pills or medicine by carolcooper

Now and again I like to remember how much progress medicine has made in just two centuries or so. Times past were fairly primitive, even if they made for some terrific artwork. Antibiotics hadn’t been discovered, barbers did the blood-letting, and festering sores were common. Nowadays, we have antibiotics galore, barbers are a lot more careful, and most of the festering sores are political.

Diagnostics were rudimentary until quite recently. It was 1816 when French physician René Laennec (1781–1826) invented the stethoscope. The very first version looked like a cylinder of rolled up paper, which is exactly what it was. Binaural stethoscope models came later. Pronounced La Neck, René’s surname was to become an important clue as to where medics should wear their instrument when not in use.

There wasn’t even a clinical thermometer until 1866. X-rays only came along in 1895. Doctors did not always examine their patients closely because it was considered rude, but they did scrutinize their excreta, which was apparently not rude. In 2026, doctors have a vast array of diagnostic tools and no longer have to dabble in their patients’ bodily waste. They despatch it to some hapless lab technician instead.

*A 17^th century medical practitioner examining urine. Oil painting after David Teniers the younger.*

Both boon and bane, the computer only made its impact on medicine this century. In 1826, English mathematician Charles Babbage (1791–1871) published work that was pivotal to computing and actuarial science. Mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) was only ten at the time, but she later collaborated with Babbage and produced the first algorithm. Today, IT has completely changed the face of medical practice. It is now possible for a doctor to avoid looking at the patient at all, even when they are in the same room, and spend the entire consultation fixated on the screen.

(c) Royal Free Hospital; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation — Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, after John Singer Sargent

Women doctors were non-existent until the 19^th century. In 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836–1917) became the first woman to qualify as a doctor in Britain. However, one James Barry (1789–1865) had qualified in 1812 and practised as a British army surgeon for over 40 years. Only after he died did anyone discover that he had been she all along. So much for the thoroughness of the army medical.

The fairer sex could develop either brains or ovaries, but not both, declared one authority in 1874. On the whole, it was a woman’s job to reproduce, not go to medical school.

*Home birth. Painting by Carl Lemoch (1885)*

Alas, reproduction was not always straightforward. Midwifery was in its infancy, so to speak, and women had unpleasant low-tech births. A mother-to-be preferred to deliver at home, so, while she laboured, the other children could play nearby, and someone would be sent to boil lots and lots of water, possibly to make tea. No woman wanted to deliver in hospital anyway for fear of catching deadly puerperal fever. Nowadays, unpleasant high-tech births are the norm and many women still favour delivering at home. With puerperal fever now a thing of history books, doctors cannot understand why women shun maternity wards, and interested parties still debate whether birth is safer at home than in hospital.

Some of the most dramatic advances have been in surgery. It was a gruesome business until general anaesthesia came along around the mid-19^th century. Those that survived their procedure then faced the risk of deadly infections. Surgeons did not wear rubber gloves until much later that century, and the use of masks did not take off until the 1920s. Bacteria had a field day.

The Gross Clinic (1875) by Thomas Eakins. Dr Samuel Gross operates on a young boy’s leg. A towel soaked in chloroform serves as anaesthetic

However, while human endeavour has advanced healthcare, microorganisms have made progress too, ever adapting and mutating to resist new treatments. French legend Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) did not use the term superbugs or antimicrobial resistance, but he did say “Messieurs, it is microbes that will have the last word.”

The paperback of The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects will be out on August 20. You can pre-order it here, or get the hardback, ebook, or audiobook right now.

GET THE BOOK

11May2026

WHAT CAN COMPARE TO THE HUMAN HEART?

Posted in Pills or medicine by carolcooper

The heart is unique. Limbs can relax. Even the brain can rest sometimes. The heart cannot. It beats on average once a second, or nearly three billion times in a person’s lifetime. Of course, lungs are vital organs too. Like the heart, their movement is obvious even to a casual observer. But there are two of them, and they hardly carry the same significance. Has any poet ever pledged his lungs to his true love?

Surgery demands a still and bloodless field. But the heart is in continuous motion, pumping 5 litres (one gallon) of blood every minute. Many warned that operating on the heart was impossible.

That didn’t deter everyone. American surgeon Dwight Harken (1910–93) was a larger-than-life military medic from Iowa. Harken arrived in England with the US military in preparation for the D-Day landings. He was thirty-four when he was appointed to manage the 160th US General Hospital, a rambling field hospital in the grounds of Stowell Park, Gloucestershire. It bore more than a passing resemblance to a string of Nissen huts, but it contained all the equipment Harken needed.

Tall, red-haired, and somewhat temperamental, Harken turned out to be just right for the job. In the last year of the war, he busied himself removing bullets and shell fragments from the chests of 134 soldiers. In fifty-six cases, these were inside the heart. Even so, every single one of his patients survived, even Sergeant Leroy Rohrbach. An explosion at the Battle of Normandy had sent a piece of shrapnel flying into Rohrbach’s chest, where it embedded in his heart.

Harken had already tried twice to remove it. At the third attempt, there was a torrential haemorrhage. Harken managed to plug the wound in the heart with one finger. The operation was a success, although Harken had stitched a finger of his glove to the patient’s heart.

If you enjoyed this extract, you might like The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects which contains many more anecdotes of medical firsts. “Sometimes gruesome, frequently fascinating and, on occasions, very funny indeed” ~ Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

20Dec2025

FREE CHRISTMAS CRACKERS!

Posted in Family life by carolcooper

Have you seen the price of Christmas crackers? And all you get for you money is one lousy ‘joke’ and a paper hat that goes up flames when you light the pudding.

Fear not. If you too have decided not to buy any this year, here’s something to make up for it – a totally free selection of the 12 worst gags and rhymes, each of them bad enough to be included in a cracker.

🎄Did you hear about the man who stole an Advent calendar? He got 25 days.🎄

☃️A man who was trapped in a snow globe factory wishes to thank all those people who helped release him. He says he is fine, albeit a little shaken.☃️

⛪In the churchyard I saw four men walking round and round with a coffin. An hour later, they were still there, still walking. They must have lost the plot.⛪

☃️What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire? Frostbite!☃️

🚜Paddy is ploughing his field with a steamroller. His neighbour says, ‘You thicko, you’re not supposed to plough with a steamroller.’ Paddy says, ‘How do you know I’m not growing mashing potatoes?’🚜

🎄The Christmas jumper my auntie gave me last year kept picking up static electricity. I took it back and exchanged it for another one, free of charge.🎄

🎄Woman gets a call from the double-glazing company telling him she hasn’t paid for his windows yet. She replies, ‘But your salesman promised they would pay for themselves.🎄

🧝What do you call an elf wearing earmuffs? Whatever you like. He can’t hear you.🧝

🏀Why should you never invite a team of basketball players for Christmas? Because they’re always dribbling. 🏀

☃️What did the snowman say to the aggressive carrot? ‘Get out of my face.’ ☃️

⭐Regular sex helps keep your memory alive. I wish you all a happy 2016. ⭐

You may be wondering why, after a long absence from my blog, I’m posting something so inane. It’s because, the world being as it is, the serious stuff can break your heart. So tell me whether you bought crackers this year.

Meanwhile, here’s wishing you an enjoyable Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

19Dec2024

WHAT’S THE MOST CHRISTMASSY MEDICAL OBJECT?

Posted in Pills or medicine by carolcooper

A lot of readers enjoy seasonal reading this time of year. I know this from the popularity of books such as Sue Moorcroft’s A Skye Full of Stars and Elaine Everest’s A Christmas Wish at Woolworth’s. So perhaps it should not have surprised me to be asked, “What’s the most Christmassy object in your book?”

I scratched my head. My latest book, The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects focuses, as the title suggests, on a dozen iconic objects in medical history. While writing it, I gave hardly a thought to the birth of Jesus. But, with Christmas now less than a week away, I offer this festive tale of the X-ray machine.

Roentgen (1845-1923) with a beard fit for Santa

It was December 1895. For over six weeks, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen had been busy in his lab in Würzburg – so busy that he missed meals, slept on a cot by his lab bench, and, it’s safe to say, hadn’t even begun Christmas shopping. What exactly was that radiation coming out of his cathode ray tube? Unlike a beam of light, these rays could go through black cardboard. Roentgen tried blocking the rays with a book, some wood, rubber, a deck of cards, and various metal sheets. Only lead stopped them completely.

Keen to find out what her husband had been doing, Anna Bertha Roentgen visited the lab. She was asked to hold out a photographic plate in front of the beam. This produced an image of her hand, complete with the bones of her fingers and the ring she was wearing. Definitely one for the family album.

Roentgen didn’t know what the rays were, so he called them ‘X’. His publication of his discovery on December 28 made the headlines. Public speculation went wild. Could peeping toms use the rays for peering through women’s knickers? In response to this fear, one London manufacturer began making lead-lined underwear.

As it turned out, there were more serious worries. The first medical X-ray was just weeks later. In January 1896, Birmingham doctor John Hall-Edwards (1858–1926) took an image of a needle stuck in the hand of his assistant. Hall-Edwards had an interest in photography and went on to take many more radiographs during his career.

X-rays weren’t just used for making a diagnosis. Doctors also used them as remedies for a miscellany of conditions, like moles and skin conditions ranging from acne to TB of the skin.

Unfortunately, it soon emerged that prolonged X-ray exposure causes dermatitis, burns, ulceration, hair loss – and worse. Hall-Edwards had to have his left arm amputated below the elbow when he developed cancer. He then lost four fingers from his right hand, leaving him with just one thumb. His left hand can be found in the Chamberlain Museum of Pathology at the University of Birmingham.

Since then, medics have become far more cautious in their use of X-rays and there are plenty of safeguards. What’s more, the concept making the body transparent has led to imaging methods that don’t use X-rays. So that’s a happy ending, although not an ending as such, because as you know inventors love inventing.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year.

23Oct2024

THEY SAID IT COULDN’T BE DONE

Posted in Pills or medicine, Writing by carolcooper

There’s no shortage of great quotes in medicine but this one is among my favourites.

“Once they said it could not be done, it was a sufficient challenge to do it.“

Born on this day in 1918, American heart surgeon Walton Lillehei rose to that challenge and pioneered new ways of doing what couldn’t be done.

Some had said it shouldn’t even be attempted. Operating on the heart was too dangerous. Surgery requires a still and bloodless field. But the heart is in continuous motion, pumping 5 litres of blood every minute. If you stop it, there are dire effects on the brain. It can’t survive more than four minutes without a supply of blood.

In Minnesota, Walt Lillehei came up with the idea of operating on children’s hearts using cross-circulation, where one of the parents does the work of the child’s heart and lungs during the operation. His first patient in 1954 was Gregory Glidden, a thirteen-month-old with a hole in the heart called a ventricular septal defect (VSD). Gregory’s father had the same blood group, so he lay on another operating table next to his child and provided oxygen-rich blood during the surgery.

Gregory’s heart was still beating, but it was bloodless as Lillehei stitched up the hole in the heart. The operation took seventeen minutes. Gregory survived his surgery, though sadly he died of pneumonia a few days later.

Lillehei used cross-circulation on many more occasions to correct congenital heart defects. It was the first series of successful open-heart operations.

Reactions were mixed. Some doctors thought his technique was immoral because it put the donor at risk. That was true. The method had, as Lillehei admitted, a potential mortality rate of 200 per cent.

The popular press, on the other hand, was in rapture, especially when one five-year-old girl was riding her tricycle seven weeks after open-heart surgery. A New Heart for Pamela became headline news, never mind that it was a repaired heart rather than a new one.

The publicity had benefits for the blood bank too. Each operation needed about 7 litres of blood, and local residents soon flocked to become donors and help save young lives.

Plastic didn’t come into use for blood bottles until the 1970s

Of course, cross-circulation wasn’t always feasible. Lillehei also worked with colleagues to refine the heart-lung machine, a new device that could take over the work of the patient’s heart and lungs during surgery.

Walt Lillehei is just one of the many shining lights that made the impossible possible. There are more trailblazers and their iconic inventions in my newest book The History of Medicine in Twelve Objects.

“Sometimes gruesome, frequently fascinating, and on occasions very funny indeed”, says the Daily Mail.

By a happy coincidence, the book is out tomorrow in hardback, ebook, and audio. You can find out more right here.

23May2024

SHORT RULES FOR A WRITING RETREAT

Posted in friends, Writing by carolcooper

Actually there are no rules. Only the cardinal rule that you’re there to concentrate on your writing.

A retreat does not mean silence, I hasten to reassure any who, like me, were convent-educated. Although a retreat can be solitary if you choose to go away on your own to a place where you’ll be left undisturbed to knuckle down to your work in progress.

Every writer puts a lot onto a page. Now and again the creative tank needs topping up, and a retreat is an excellent way to do it.

My preferred retreat is with a group of like-minded author friends in self-catered accommodation, so that your week or however many days you have will be full of conversation and laughter about books and much else.

What you’re escaping is the mundanity of everyday life and the miscellany of duties that so easily squeeze writing out of your day. Typically one of you takes charge of making the booking, while everyone present shares the chores and the costs.

Yes, you do need to eat, which may involve shopping and cooking. So why do it? Because it’s energising and inspiring.

You may have insightful discussions with fellow writers, refine your writing techniques or your approach to scheduling your work. On some retreats, authors agree to critique each other’s writing. Perhaps you’ll share information about book events or marketing strategies. In my experience, the knowledge shared can cover almost anything, from identifying songbirds to spotting sepsis.

Feeling cramped isn’t conducive to creativity, so you need enough bedrooms and bathrooms.

It stands to reason that self-catering works best when you know one another in advance, everyone is willing to pull their weight, and there’s no squabbling over bedrooms.

The venue can be at home or abroad, and it can basic or luxurious. Yes, ours had a heated swimming pool. OK, I’m lying. It had two swimming pools.

Based on experience, here are my tips as to what to bring with you:

Power cables and adaptors (and remember to take them home at the end).
Soap.
Rubber gloves for washing up.
A writing-related game to play.

We played ‘Who wrote this?’, a game devised by my husband, where we each placed three or so passages from our own books (or from a work in progress into a hat. We then took turns reading them out loud and getting everyone to guess the author.

We chose our extracts with care, as many of us know the others’ work. To avoid giving the game away, some of us changed the characters’ names in our passages. The evening turned out to be fun and insightful, especially on those occasions when the writing fooled us.

A favourite word game was the Dictionary Game (aka Fictionary which is also a tradename for book editing software – not needed for this game). Players guess the meaning of an obscure word. For each round, one player finds and reads out a challenging word, while the others compose a fake definition for it. The made-up definitions, as well as the correct ones, are collected by the selector and read aloud. Each player then votes on which definition they believe to be correct. Points are awarded for correct guesses, and for having their own fake definition chosen by another player. Another entertaining evening.

Have you been on a writing retreat? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please drop me a comment below.

10Dec2023

HOW DANGEROUS IS YOUR CHRISTMAS?

Posted in Family life, Modern life by carolcooper

The season of goodwill comes with its toll of health hazards. Queen Victoria brought Christmas trees to this country, so it’s her fault that every year your living room becomes a right royal mess.

Tree needles really are an eyesore. Every hospital in the country sees injuries caused by Christmas trees, usually corneal abrasions from a branch or needle. Several of the 250 species of pinacea also cause allergic reactions on face and hands, and the trees with the most attractive smell tend to produce the least attractive rashes.

Traditional glass baubles originate from the storybook town of Lauscha in Germany. In the mid-19th century, their glassblowers began making fragile ornaments, silvering the inside and lacquering the outside. If you’ve had the good taste and deep pockets to buy these fragile balls for your tree, be careful. The shards can tear your skin to ribbons. Get hideous decorations from the petrol station instead.

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, but beware. Kids enjoy nibbling red berries. As few as 20 can cause a permanent silent night. Mistletoe is dangerous too. Eating more than 10 berries causes severe diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Luckily it’s usually hung out of reach. However you can catch plenty of other things from the antics beneath it.

Actually anything can happen at Christmas. It affects every organ in the body, starting in about September. The pundits agree that the brain is the first to go, helped by lashings of Christmas spirit. If one of your relatives is comatose on the couch, that’s the usual cause, although head injuries, diabetes, and TV programmes are other likely diagnoses.

Then there’s carbon monoxide poisoning, especially if you’re a Scrooge about boiler maintenance. Predisposing factors are conventional flues, high winds, double glazing, and tightly closing windows and doors to maintain a cosy fug. CO poisoning typically causes dizziness, confusion, headaches, and unconsciousness, though it can also mimic almost any condition.

It’s hard not to mention food when the average Brit puts away 7,000 Calories on Christmas Day, which is about four times more than necessary. This Christmas, especially up in western Scotland, more ulcers will burst between 5:00 and 7:00 PM than at any other time of the year.

Other parts of the alimentary tract are also at risk. Some people accidentally swallow sharp objects such as toothpicks along with their Yuletide fare. The elderly are especially prone to this, not because their faculties are impaired, but because dentures interfere with the sensation up eating something sharp.

One woman in her 80s developed peritonitis days after enjoying a traditional Christmas cake with all the trimmings. Surgeons removed a decorative plastic robin from her bowel.

Finally, here’s my Christmas cracker riddle for you.

What’s the difference between Christmas Day and Christmas Disease? Surprisingly, almost everything. Christmas disease is a form of haemophilia due to an inherited lack of factor IX. Without it, the sufferer haemorrhages repeatedly from skin, gut, joints, and muscles. Christmas Day, on the other hand, comes but once a year. There’s just one similarity. Both can bleed you to death.

Stay well and have a happy Christmas.

21Nov2023

NOVEMBER 22

Posted in Modern life, Places by carolcooper

Everyone has their own memories of that day. In this short anecdote, a girl called Catherine is twelve years old when her hero dies.

It was Friday and I didn’t want to be late for Petal. Ever since I’d started dog-walking after school, I had prided myself on being punctual as well as responsible. I rushed up to the fifth floor.

Mrs Berger trembled all over when she opened her door. ‘Oh, Catherine, it’s the most terrible thing.’

I thought Petal must have swallowed one of Mrs Berger’s pearl earrings again, but it was much worse than that.

‘The president is dead.’

My hand flew to my mouth. ‘No! What happened?’

Mrs Berger dabbed at her eyes as she told me. I could hardly believe it, but she had seen it on TV and she said that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas around 1 P.M. DC time. I was in the refectory then, wiping down the tables. Even now, my fingers still stank of orange peel, banana skins, and vinegar.

Numb, I thought back to that morning. The geography lesson hadn’t gone too well because I’d got muddled between the St Lawrence Seaway and the Gulf Stream in front of the whole class, but I’d have given anything to be back there being laughed at, just a few hours ago when the best president ever was still alive.

‘It’s so terrible,’ said Mrs Berger.

It was way beyond terrible. And I still had to walk Petal, because dogs need to do their business no matter who got shot. I took her leash, wound my scarf around my neck, and headed out.

In the lobby, Mrs Mezzanine in her mothy coat stopped me and declared it was a dreadful tragedy. ‘America is so violent. In the old country, things like this didn’t happen. Or maybe they did, but I’m so old that I’ve forgotten.’

I nodded. I felt sad too but I had to keep it together for Petal’s sake, so I pulled her away from sniffing Mrs Mezzanine’s bottom and told her, ‘Come on, Petal. Let’s find you a tree.’

As I waited at Petal’s favorite fire hydrant, my fingers knotted and unknotted in anguish. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the usual thing. I walked all the way up New Hampshire Avenue to the little grocery store. Petal sniffed at several trees on the way and tried to eat an empty pack of Lucky Strikes, but she still hadn’t done what she was supposed to do, so I took her down to Virginia Avenue where the State Department is.

This was where I’d been standing the time I saw President Kennedy. It was just one glimpse when he was in his limo on his way to the State Department for a press conference, but from then on it was like I had known him forever. And now he was gone.

Mommy had heard the news too by the time I returned Petal and got to our apartment. She gave me a big hug. For dinner, she made hamburger out of ground round and then she broiled it just how I like it.

I cut into the meat and stared at it. Instead of hunger growling in my stomach, I had a hard knot inside like when I hadn’t done my homework, only much worse. Even thinking of a Hostess chocolate cupcake didn’t help. The hurt from the knot went right through my heart and out the other side.

The TV was on. I couldn’t bear to watch, but I couldn’t bear not to watch, either.

‘His poor family.’ Mom sat there on the couch looking hopeless.

I nodded sickly. The only thing on TV was the same news over and over, and we already knew that Kennedy was dead and that Lyndon Johnson had been sworn in as President on Air Force One. You didn’t need to see Mrs Kennedy in her pink suit stained with blood and brains down the front to know how awful it was.

It’s almost incredible that, even sixty years on, we still don’t know exactly what happened on that day. Let me know what you think.

15Apr2023

WHAT’S AN AUTHOR TO DO AT THE LONDON BOOK FAIR?

Posted in London, Writing by carolcooper

If you write books, work in publishing, or find yourself anywhere near people who do, you’re probably hearing a lot about the London Book Fair right now.

This year LBF is at Olympia from April 18 to 20, and the theme is “Defining the Future of Creative Content”. If you’re an author, your reaction may well be Grrrr! I write books, not ‘creative content’.

There’s nothing like the phrase creative content to put authors in their place. Should an author even bother with LBF? Well, the fair is hardly a must, but it can be useful for the insights you’ll gain into the business of publishing, the chance to network, get some marketing ideas, and listen to some interesting talks.

The Author of the Day interviews are usually worth attending. This year’s guest authors include crime writer Ann Cleeves and children’s author Robin Stevens. I also hope to be there on Tuesday afternoon at Author HQ for the fifth annual Selfies Book Awards which showcase the very best in self-publishing.

Every year the book fair is a little different. I hadn’t entirely expected last year’s energetic display of Arabian dancing.

Still, some features are eternal. If it’s your first LBF, I can confidently pass on seven suggestions.

1 Leave your beloved manuscript at home. Don’t even expect to speak to a publisher or agent unless you have an appointment. LBF is a trade exhibition, so it you can’t expect it to cater wholly for authors or would-be authors.

2 Wear comfortable shoes. Olympia is vast, there’s very little seating, and it’s impossible to keep smiling when your feet are killing you. What’s more, LBF doesn’t sell foot plasters. A gap in the market, right?

3 Bring paracetamol or whatever works for your headaches. LBF doesn’t sell analgesics either.

4 A sandwich wouldn’t come amiss. LBF does sell food, but you may find the fare a tad overpriced.

5 Remember your business cards.

6 Don’t help yourself to books from the stands. There will be freebies like keyrings, bookmarks, tote bags, and the like, but the books on display are intended to show off a publisher’s range, so stop stuffing your bag with glossy new titles.

7 You can’t buy the books either. LBF isn’t a bookshop.

If you go, I hope you have a wonderful time. And let me know of any tips you’d like to pass on to future visitors.

You may enjoy a previous post JANET & JOHN GO TO THE LONDON BOOK FAIR.

1Oct2022

HOW DO YOU FIND SOMEONE WHO’S MISSING?

Posted in Egypt, Family life, Places by carolcooper

How do you find your missing sister? Who can you even ask to help when you live in a police state? Not the police, that’s for sure.

This short extract from The Girls from Alexandria goes back to February 1968.

Monsieur Jean, we called the man. It wasn’t his real name. I wondered if he’d ever been a real journalist. Rashida served him coffee when he arrived, and she, too, saw his frayed cuffs and made her disdain plain.

‘Who knows why she left? After all, the brain is a mysterious box, especially a female’s.’ Monsieur Jean spread his hands and laughed at his own wit.

How dare he speak about women like this, and what did he know of the brain, anyway? He was just some old journalist in ragged clothes.

He extended his little finger and sipped his tiny coffee with huge noises. ‘She hasn’t disappeared completely,’ he observed when he’d put down the cup.

True, she hadn’t, because she’d sent postcards now and again. But she was no longer here in Alex with Mother, Father, and most of all me, her biggest fan, even if she did have a tendency to say I was a humara. Well, she could call me a she-donkey all she wanted if only she’d come home.

‘What is her name again?’ asked Monsieur Jean.

‘Simone. Would you like to see the cards she sent?’ Father handed him a small bundle.

‘Any letters?’

‘No.’

Monsieur Jean should have realised that letters took longer to reach Egypt, arriving weeks late, if at all, with a printed strip down one side of the envelope where the censors had slit it open then sealed it up again. Under Nasser, nobody ever wrote letters if a postcard would do.

‘Let’s see.’ The man picked up one of the postcards and held it up to the light coming through the only window. We were sitting in the basement, the one room that we were fairly sure wasn’t bugged. ‘Her handwriting is interesting.’

Father gave a polite smile. ‘In what way?’

‘I am something of an expert in calligraphy.’

Of course he was, I thought. ‘What do you make of her writing?’ I ventured.

‘It’s very mature,’ he said. Since Simone was twenty-four, this was hardly a revelation. He took off his glasses and twirled them in his fingers. ‘I suppose you have spoken to her friends?’

Mother fidgeted in her armchair. ‘Of course.’

‘In cases like this, there’s always something the family overlooks. But I have my methods,’ he assured us.

As a nice young Arab woman, I had to mind my manners, but it was hard to hide my impatience.

Father asked what he proposed to do, and the man outlined his plans. His account clearly aimed to impress, but it was just a long-winded way of telling us he would use the network of contacts he’d made over a thirty-year career in newspapers.

My parents thanked Monsieur Jean courteously, and he left, shoving on his battered hat and promising to be in touch.

‘C’est un pauvre con,’ Father said as soon as the front door had shut.

Mother glared at Father because un con is the height of vulgarity, and not at all the same thing as con in English, though he was probably one of those too. ‘But,’ she said, ‘he’s the only chance we’ve got.’

If that was the case, then we were never going to find my sister.

***

You can read more about Nadia and her missing sister Simone in The Girls from Alexandria. Shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award, it’s available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.