In a minimalist loft conversion at the top of an old factory on the outskirts of Bordeaux, Lucille Latignac stared unseeingly at her copy of Charles Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal.

She had a class in just over an hour with her group of mature students, but she didn’t know if she would be up to it. She hadn’t heard her husband Philippe’s voice in fifteen years, and the sudden sound of it had felled her almost as if she had been struck by lightning.

But it was the mention of his handsome son, Jean-Christophe, that had made her memory flood with the pain she thought she had left behind her in Paris when she’d walked out that night.

At first, she’d intended to fight for shared custody. But she was herself the product of an acrimonious divorce, fought over by two warring parents, used as an emotional pawn, sent from one house to the other where she was ruthlessly quizzed about the other parent’s lifestyle – and based on all of this, she had decided it would be better for Jean-Christophe to stay with Philippe. If she were honest, it also gave herself the chance to reinvent herself in the way she really wanted, but self-awareness was not one of Lucille’s strengths.

Suddenly the image of father and son, now a grown-up man, catching fish together, filled her with jealousy and regret at what she’d lost.

And Philippe himself had sounded so different! Instead of the peremptory chef/waitress tone that had characterized their relationship, and which she had found so hard to take, his voice now held both humour and humanity.

When he’d talked about leaving his starred restaurants in Paris to look after the father who had taught him everything, it could have been just a good story, but she could hear the genuine emotion in his voice. Sitting here in this fashionably sparse setting, in the new life she had created for herself, she remembered his feelings for that irritating old man and almost cried. Men who could love were not so easy to find.

Without really meaning to, she found herself checking online for details of the food festival he was organizing. And what a strange coincidence it was that as well as teaching mature students literature, she had spent so many years of her life running Street Taste, a small charity that helped refugees earn a small income by using their culinary skills. She wondered for a moment if the trustees would pay the fees for Street Taste to take a stall – and, more importantly, whether it would be a good idea if they did, after she had spent so long convincing herself that that chapter of her life was firmly closed. How would her ex-husband and son feel if she walked back into their lives without warning?

Eighteen