Desiring Cairo
The sparky, funny sequel to Louisa Young’s acclaimed first novel of belly-dancing, motorbikes and single-parenthood.Angeline Gower, ex-bellydancer, ex-biker, single mother of a little girl who is not actually her child, is mired in problems again in this wonderful sequel.Her relationship with Harry, the lover turned cop, remains fraught, the lure of the glamorous but no good Eddie hasn’t gone away. And there is yet another element complicating things know – the seductive and mysterious Sa’id. With Angeline older and a little wiser, Louisa Young weaves a tale that is richer, sexier and more moving than ‘Baby Love’, while remaining just as exciting. Shifting between Shepherd’s Bush and Cairo, full of the contrasts between the West and the Middle East, ‘Desiring Cairo’ thrills and enthralls while at the same time making us think and feel deeply about the love between mother and child, man and woman, friend and friend.Louisa Young has skilfully written this so that it is equally enjoyable read on its own, or as part of the trilogy that starts with ‘Baby Love’ and ends with ‘Tree of Pearls’.
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DESIRING CAIRO
The Angeline Gower Trilogy
Louisa Young
The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by The Borough Press 2015
First published by Flamingo, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Louisa Young 1999
Louisa Young asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007577996
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007397013
Version: 2015-09-07
âFunny, sexy and tenderâ ESTHER FREUD
âSpectacularly worth readingâ The Times
âA stylishly literate thrillerâ Marie Claire
âYou will keep coming back to this book when you should be doing something elseâ LOUIS DE BERNIÃRES
âExciting, compelling and tenseâ Time Out
âFunny and scary. In writing honestly and unsentimentally, Young celebrates the unequivocal nature of parental love with verve and styleâ Mail on Sunday
âWry, perky, entertainingâ Observer
âEngaging, wise-cracking, likeable, brilliantly sustained ⦠funny, humane and utterly readableâ Good Housekeeping
For Isabel Adomakoh Young, the lovely daughter
âI do believe that, with all its drawbacks, Egypt is the most interesting and convenient country that a lady can travel overâ
ELIOT WARBURTON, 1845
Contents
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter One: Hakim
Chapter Two: Luxor
Chapter Three: Talking about Gary Cooper
Chapter Four: Hakimâs Business, Harryâs News
Chapter Five: Next
Chapter Six: Tell Mama
Chapter Seven: Brighton
Chapter Eight: Harry Cooks Dinner
Chapter Nine: Sunday Night
Chapter Ten: Saâid
Chapter Eleven: The Funeral
Chapter Twelve: Dinner with Saâid
Chapter Thirteen: Tell Your Own Mama
Chapter Fourteen: Chrissie, Get Out of My Bath
Chapter Fifteen: Sunday Night Coming Down Again
Chapter Sixteen: âYou are dearer than my days, you are more beautiful than my dreamsâ
Chapter Seventeen: I Wish I Was in Egypt
Chapter Eighteen: What Harry Knows
Chapter Nineteen: The Madness Sets In
Chapter Twenty: Cairo
Chapter Twenty-One: Family Life
Chapter Twenty-Two: Letâs Go to the Bank
Chapter Twenty-Three: Give Me Your Hands
Chapter Twenty-Four: Semiramis
Chapter Twenty-Five: God, when he created the world, put a great sea between the Muslims and the Christians, âfor a reasonâ
Chapter Twenty-Six: The End, and the Beginning
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Louisa Young
About the Publisher
I wrote these novels a long time ago. I spent my days correcting the grammar at the Sunday Times, and my nights writing. I could no longer travel the world doing features about born-again Christian bike gangs in New Jersey, or women salt-miners in Gujarat, or the Mr and Mrs Perfect Couple of America Pageant in Galveston, Texas, which was the sort of thing I had been doing up until then. I had to stay still. I had a baby. Babies focus the mind admirably: any speck of time free has to be made the most of.
I had £300 saved up, so I put the baby and the manuscript in the back of a small car and drove to Italy, where we lived in some rooms attached to a tiny church in a village which was largely abandoned, other than for some horses and some aristocrats. A nice girl groom took the baby to the sea each day in my car while I stared at the pages thinking: âIf I donât demonstrate some belief in this whole notion of novels, and me as a novelist, then why should anyone else?â
Re-reading these books now, I think, âChrist! Such energy!â I was so young â so full of beans. I described the plot to my father, who wrote novels and was briefly, in his day, the new Virginia Woolf. After about five minutes he said, âYes, that all sounds goodâ â and I said, âDad, thatâs just chapter oneâ.
