Kell went back to his cabin, retrieved The Scramble for Africa, got lost in the switchback corridors on the sleeping level, eventually found his way to the restaurant and ate a decent lunch. The ferry, now pulling out into the open sea, appeared to be only half-full; no queue had formed outside the restaurant and there were enough spare tables to accommodate the mostly French passengers who had materialized en masse from the lower decks after parking their cars. There were no Africans in sight; the food was French, the prices in euros and the clientele exclusively white. Kell waited for François to make an appearance, lingering over his book and coffee, but by two thirty he had still not shown and Kell gave up, on the assumption that the Frenchman must have eaten in the self-service canteen. He paid his bill and walked upstairs, passing through the canteen as the low, whitewashed houses of Carthage narrowed to a chalk strip on the horizon. The entire area was deserted save for a young British couple on a damage-limitation exercise with two screaming toddlers and a new-born baby.
