Camille said afterwards that all the unsayable things that were uttered, the horrible tones of voice, the nasty accusations – could actually be seen, months, even years in advance: waves of discord scurrying across the bay, silent crests appearing out of nowhere, luscious spillages of familial rifts borne thither by the tides. Camille, especially, understood how the little things had always irked her brothers-in-law – the way in which their mother doted on Seb, her baby; how Seb’s wife had been given Harry’s mother’s pearl earrings (by Eva; I hated them, said Camille), and Henry’s wife Harriet was given the emerald ones (by Harry), but Octavia, George felt, had always been undervalued by his parents for reasons he didn’t understand at all (But she got the ruby necklace! Harriet cried). These disputes were inflated beyond their individual worth, until they bounced around the house like children’s balloons at a party, innocent of the explosion that would occur when the women noticed the missing diamonds. Worse, all the prejudices and attitudes which Henry and Harriet, Octavia and George, had harboured for so long, and had suppressed more or less during Eva’s lifetime and throughout Camille’s marriage, now began seeping to the surface. Their thoughts were oil spills on water, heavy, polluting liquids which sloshed again and again against the smooth plaster façade of their voices and expressions, until the derangement began to show – an angry red pustule appearing in the middle of Octavia’s immaculately made-up cheek (She wouldn’t know, being French, or wherever she is from); a mottled streak across Harriet’s forehead (I can’t believe the pearl set is going out of the country!); a whitehead glowing from George’s nose (But your children can’t be considered true Harcourt-Vanes, not in the spirit of the past generations. Not if they don’t grow up here).

It was for all these reasons – and because she couldn’t yet, if ever, face whichever other women were involved in Seb’s misdeeds – that Camille left the islands immediately after the service. She wanted to honour Eva in this public way, but she did not want to go to the wake. She, alone of the Harcourt-Vane sons and their wives, kissed a shell and added it to the pile in the church. Then she booked a taxi, flight, and train south. So that, two days later, by the time Seb returned to London, she had taken all her personal possessions out of the house in Highgate, and written a list of what she would like to claim from their marriage, to be trucked to France, Paris, Saint-Germain. It was precisely to that elegant quartier, where she had studied once, almost penniless, that she would return, penniful now, with her children. To inhabit the city differently – herself, too – in her new bare knowledge.

JUDGE: You are Zoe’s stepmother. What was your feeling at this moment, as you left?