She did not know then how prophetic her words were. Now she could see the rising spiral of the tasks which then lay ahead of her – Alice being coaxed to eat, Alice afraid of the dark, Alice fleeing from the cows, Alice wanting to be taken for a walk, Alice crying because the village children had teased her, Alice requiring teachers, doctors, medicines, books, dresses, shoes, amusements. Alice waiting for her long hair to be brushed while it covered her white shoulders like a golden veil.

Emilie sighed.

There was a sound outside the door and she realised that her memories had taken but a few seconds, although it seemed to her that they passed in a pageant as slow as the years in which they had taken place.

‘Madame Guibout, Madame.’

Jeanne ushered in the couturière. She was a small vivacious woman, her complexion sallow from the long hours in stifling rooms, her eyes strained and bloodshot from too close a concentration on the garments she created so skilfully.

‘Bonjour, Madame.’

It took but a few seconds to exchange greetings and then as one business woman to another Emilie and Madame Guibout dispensed with civility.

‘Travelling gowns, morning costumes, Ball dresses, robes de style, manteaux, dolmans, paletots and casaques! Mademoiselle will want everything,’ Emilie said.

‘And for yourself, Madame?’

‘An entire trousseau.’

‘And how soon?’

‘I desire the impossible! Three days – a week at the outside!’

‘It will be expensive.’

‘I am aware of that,’ Emilie said, ‘but I shall look to you not to cheat me.’

‘I shall want extra assistants. They are not cheap.’

‘That is understood!’

‘It will mean an exhausting number of fittings for both yourself and Mademoiselle.’

‘We shall be here when you require us.’

‘Then it will be done, Madame.’

‘Thank you.’

Madame Guibout crossed the room and opened the door. Outside two assistants were standing, their arms almost breaking under the strain of the materials they carried. There were satins, velvets, cashmeres, failles, muslins, foulards, alpacas. poplins, rolls and patterns in every texture and colour.

Madame Guibout beckoned them in. She took a roll of azure blue velvet and threw it over the end of the bed.

‘From Lyons,’ she said briefly.

Emilie thought of it against Mistral’s hair. Once Alice had worn the same colour in the spring.

The door was still open and Mistral came running in.

‘I am nearly dressed, as you told me, Aunt Emilie,’ she said. ‘Oh, what lovely, lovely colours!’

She put out her hand to touch the blue velvet and as she did so Madame Guibout covered it with a bale of grey gauze. It was as soft as the mist which lies over a lake in the morning before the sun has risen, the hue of a wood pigeon’s breast, of the fine ashes which fall from a smouldering fire.

‘For yourself, Madame,’ Madame Guibout said.

Emilie stared at the gauze and then at Mistral.

‘No, for Mademoiselle,’ she said quietly.