‘I know,’ Sophie looked as if she might cry. ‘Jean-Christophe’s coming in this afternoon. Do you think we dare talk to him about it?’

‘Don’t mention anything about Philippe. Just ask him about the mother and see what he volunteers,’ Jo suggested.

‘Mum, you are so wise!’

‘Am I?’ Jo didn’t feel wise at all, but compliments like this were rare enough to be squirrelled away and brought out in the bad times.

In her sparsely furnished loft in Bordeaux, Lucille Latignac was staring at a crumpled family photo and considering her next move. She hadn’t been sure until she’d been to the food festival and seen her son and ex-husband together. Their closeness had made her feel both jealous and excluded. Their life in Bratenac, which she’d expected to find suburban and dull, had instead seemed a garden of Eden.

And she, she well knew, was the serpent. But then, she’d always felt the serpent got a bad deal. After all, she wasn’t trying to bring evil to the world – only to get a little happiness for herself.

Philippe, always attractive in a crumpled sort of way, had mellowed into a rounded human being. Just as the salt and pepper in his beard had softened his almost superhero jaw, his new attitude had softened his personality. Some people became more rigid as they aged, but Philippe seemed the opposite. At its most basic, she had seen the strength of the love between him and their son, and feeling excluded from that was almost physically painful. There was also the fact that Philippe was rumoured to be really quite wealthy, and she was fed up with scrambling for the rent every quarter and looking for cheap holidays on Airbnb.

Lucille became even more determined to get her family back.

Twenty-Four

Meredith, Jo and Sophie sat on the terrace waiting for Jean-Christophe to arrive.

‘Phew!’ Sophie fanned herself with the Moleskine notebook she always carried. ‘Getting hot!’

They looked out at the ripening vines in their neat lines, the soil between the rows now a rich baked brown.

‘Well, it’s the beginning of July. Poor Steve has been telling me how much he hates the summer heat,’ Jo remarked.

‘Then why did he come and live here?’ asked Sophie.

‘Jackie wanted to! Why else?’

The doorbell jangled and the tall and smiling figure of Jean-Christophe appeared. With his long, almost black hair, eyes the colour of black olives and fashionable designer stubble, he could somehow only be French.

Meredith, who’d been staring down the valley thinking of her father, turned and experienced a physical shock. Even though she’d been expecting him, encountering Jean-Christophe, who was so much the image of Philippe, hurt in some deep and hidden part of her.

Noting that Meredith was oddly silent, Jo took the initiative. ‘Hello, Jean-Christophe. Let’s just run through what Nicky’s requested, shall we?’