‘Yes, but I mean where they know you. Where you’ve already been. Where you’ve been for supper … no … dinner … I mean a place where we could … I can’t say it …’

‘Come on darling! Tell me what you mean! You can share it with me, surely!’

‘Well, I’d like to pretend … I’d like to pretend to be your lover. I’d like the waiters not to know we’re married … and to think I’m your lover. And for you to think so too, while we’re there … where you remember being before with someone else … That’s what I’d like! And I want to pretend to myself that I’m your lover and that I’m having an affair with somebody … that I’m being unfaithful to you … with you! There, isn’t that wicked of me! But I’d really like to … don’t make me blush … I know I’m blushing … you can’t imagine how exciting it would be for me to have supper with you in a terribly disreputable kind of place like that … a private cubicle where people come to make love every night … every night! How wicked! I’m as red as a beetroot. Don’t look at me!’

Highly amused he replied with a laugh, ‘We’ll go tonight. I’ll take you to a very special place. Where I’m … shall we say known.’

At seven o’clock they were climbing the stairs to the first floor of a well-known boulevard café, he grinning triumphantly, and she wearing a shy but delighted smile. As soon as they entered a private room furnished with four large easy chairs and a large red velvet divan, a dark-suited maître d’hôtel came in with the menu. Paul passed it to his wife.

‘What do you feel like eating?’

‘Well I don’t know. What’s usually good here?’

He read the whole menu as he was taking his coat off and handing it to another attendant. Then he said, ‘We’ll have something spicy tonight, I think. Potage bisque, poulet à la diable, rable de lièvre, homard à l’américaine, and we’ll have a spicy vegetable salad with that before dessert.’

The maître d’hôtel smiled as he looked at the young lady then took back the menu murmuring, ‘And would Monsieur Paul like tisane or champagne tonight?’

‘Champagne please. Very dry.’

Henriette was thrilled by the fact that the man had addressed her husband by name. Having sat down side by side on the divan they began their meal by the light of ten candles reflected in a massive mirror whose surface was dulled by thousands of names scratched by diamonds and which looked as though a huge cobweb had been spun across its clear glass.2