I inhaled, my lips shaking, and exhaled, towards the ground. I pinched the bridge of my nose but this did not stop the tears. Madame Debord stood at my shoulder and cupped my chin, lifted my face towards hers. ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’

‘The sweets,’ I said, trying very hard to smile. A tear ran down the side of my nose and came to rest at the corner of my mouth. ‘All the sugar. My heart’s beating madly.’

She blew her cheeks out. ‘Well. They weren’t meant to be eaten all at once, were they?’

I shook my head. ‘If you don’t mind, Madame, could we go home?’

‘Now? What about the little bird?’

Nausea blew through me again and this time I couldn’t stop it. I vomited the sweets into the lap of my skirt: putrid pink and orange and a shade of purple too purple to be believed.

And then. More weeks dredged past. I was constipated and vomiting bile out of an empty stomach most days, and it became nearly impossible to fit my tender bust into even my loosest chemise. I thought I was diseased but Madame knew better.

Late afternoon, cloudy. The dining room was darkening in the space between Madame and me, but I didn’t dare move from my seat to light the lamps.

‘I thought I dreamt it,’ Madame said. Her lips were quivering and even the sight of that unsteadiness made me want to purge. We faced each other across the dining table. The stew in our bowls grew cold and the back of my throat was tight with the smell of the beef. ‘I’d forgotten all about it, but that boy, the one who fixed the cupboards, he was here again, wasn’t he?’ She couldn’t look at me and spoke as if she were searching the memories of sleep. ‘You told him you would wait for him. I heard you say the words.’ She looked from her bowl to the window and back to her bowl. ‘He asked you to leave me and you promised him you would. I didn’t think it was real. I heard the words but they were so unexpected, and . . . it was so easy to convince myself I’d heard nothing at all.’

‘I only told him what he wanted to hear, Madame,’ I said.

‘We can force him to come back,’ she said, sitting taller in her chair. ‘We’ll contact the Compagnons. You’ll be married within the week and no one will ever know.’ She laughed then, a sound soft and bitter. ‘Well. Everyone will know. But they won’t have the right to say a thing about it. At least, not to you directly. You and your family can live here, with me.’

‘I can’t marry him, Madame.’

‘Why ever not? You’ve already given yourself to him.’

‘I don’t love him.’

‘Love has nothing to do with it.’ She fiddled with her spoon, rubbing her thumb up and down the edge of its cupped face. She looked at me with eyes that were bright and jittery. ‘I don’t give a damn what people think,’ she said. ‘We can do this. I can help you. A baby, really, is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It’s another chance.’