She left a note for her friends: Heading out for a walk, see you at brunch. Could you put my phone on charge please and bring it to Le Fumoir? Ax

She stepped out on to the Paris streets with a grin. She smiled at everyone she passed and one or two smiled back. The years of walking around Paris with her friends ensured she didn’t need a map, but she chose rues she couldn’t remember walking down before, places she didn’t usually cross: she wanted to get lost in Paris, to wrap herself up in the city and emerge feeling more like herself. Like Alice Digby. Lordy, she missed Alice Digby.

These thoughts floated around her as she entered the high vaulted ceilings of the Musée d’Orsay. She felt herself in the art as her eyes took in dropped-shouldered ballet dancers, a woman forlorn above her drink, nude bathers, bare-backed, exposed, the isolation in the Little Dancer. She felt the sadness in the pieces acutely, but she felt hope too. Hope in the plein-air paintings, in the work of the impressionists for so long denied success by Le Salon – Monet, Renoir, Pissarro – because they saw things differently: she thought of Charlotte, banging her own drum, and felt a clutch of pride. Perhaps it could be that way for Charlotte too? After two days apart, she felt affection even for Dimples the Unicorn.

She didn’t realise she was crying until an older man clocked her tears. ‘L’art c’est beau,’ he said. ‘Trop profond,’ Alice nodded, ‘trop profond.’ She sobbed, grateful he didn’t know she was crying at the memory of Dimples being fitted for a new pair of school shoes – a prerequisite for Charlotte to get her own feet measured, even now at thirteen – by the frowning owner of the shoe shop in town.

*

She left the gallery and made her way over the Seine to Le Fumoir, one of their favourite spots for brunch. She was the first to arrive. She shrugged happily, her legs grateful for the break, casting her eyes over the menu hungrily. Light streamed in the tall windows as she ordered tea, smiling widely at the aloof waitress, humming softly to herself.

As she stirred her tea, the feelings she’d had last night in the club when she was ensconced in her friends’ embrace emerged again. She was only just realising how unhappy she’d been. She couldn’t carry on that way. She saw herself, the old Alice, young Alice, as she skipped through Paris: singing at Place de la Concorde, falling out of bars with her friends in Le Marais, walking around galleries and dreaming of art and ideas and her future ahead. And who was she now?

It wasn’t Alice’s fault, and it wasn’t Ted’s, but they needed to work on their family together. She needed to be able to dream again, they needed to dream together. What was this fascination with Mr Hough if not a fantasy? An escape from her unhappiness. She felt a sudden urge to return home. To remind Ted of them sneaking out of le Bal – would either of them do that now? To remind him of the hazy, sun-dappled weekends they’d spent in Aix, their wedding day in Paris. How come, she pondered, they could leave convention behind enough to ditch the biggest society event of the year – striking themselves and any future offspring off the debutantes’ list – but were afraid to home-school Charlotte, because of what people might think? How had they moved so far from the people they were twenty years ago?