‘Ingenious,’ Nora said, standing back to admire her work.

‘I think it’s mean,’ Anouk said.

‘You’ve never been stung.’

‘I don’t think Dad will like it.’

Nora looked at her. Looked at her for a long time.

‘What?’ said Anouk.

‘You and your dad,’ said Nora.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

After a couple of days, Anouk inspected the trap. It was carnage. Most of the fated wasps were still alive, some boxing apoplectically against the inner walls of the dome, which was now sweaty with condensation. Others drifted drunkenly against each other. The tray at the bottom was a sluggish mixture of body parts and sugar.

She watched another wasp as it worked its way into a funnel, busily scrabbling its strong legs, its black-and-golden abdomen striped and sleek and doomed.

5

L’Inconnue

Paris, 1898

The gare de Lyon grumbled and steamed. The train heaved into the station and I disembarked, my carpet bag light enough to be carried by one hand. It was a Wednesday afternoon and travellers swarmed the station, not just people from France but from other places as well. The platform clanged with languages I didn’t understand, tongues rolling backwards, guttural sounds shifting in the throat like stones. Baffling combinations of consonants. A short, dark man who spoke French with a foreign accent offered to sell me a miniature wooden omnibus from a collection of buses and carts and coaches lined up on his stall table. He showed no emotion when I declined. A Roma woman pirouetted up and down the platform selling silk scarves. Perhaps fifty of them fluttered from her swiftly moving arms, the colours so bright and loud and uncoordinated it was as if the scarves were shouting. There was the smell of coal from the trains but there was also some other kind of burning, and there was the smell of wool, of perspiration and perfume.

The instructions Madame Debord had written to me in her final letter were to wait on the platform for the cocher, who would take me in his cab to her apartment building. He would be carrying a sign with my name written on it. I positioned myself so that my back was against an iron column, and waited, rubbing my thumb over the round, solid face of a rivet. Two well-dressed men passed by, very close, gesticulating aggressively. One of them knocked my bag to the ground with his elbow and didn’t bother to stop. As I bent to collect it, I was approached by a man with no legs. He wheeled himself over on a small wooden platform, dirt-black rags wrapped thickly around his palms and up over his wrists. He smelled like piss and rot but had a friendly, gap-toothed smile. His thick black hair shone with grease and he spoke with a drooling crook at the side of his mouth.

‘I apologize, Mademoiselle, for the indecency of those fellows.’ His voice was an eloquent, dignified slur.

‘Thank you,’ I said, remaining crouched close to the floor. I was aware of the skirts and boots and trouser legs that flowed around us, but thought that to stand would be unkind. The man entwined his fingers across his chest and tapped his thumbs together, raised his chin and smiled, lids heavy over his dark eyes.