“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never had any money to hide.”

She ignored this, still caught up in her own rapture. “A villa on Lake Lugano sounds like exactly what I need right now. I do miss sunshine and good Continental food. And I do miss Max too. The sex was truly magnificent. He’s like a rampant stud bull in bed, although I probably shouldn’t discuss such things with my daughter.”

“Mummy, you’ve been revealing your intimate secrets to me for six weeks,” I said. “And I am twenty-three. So does this mean you’re off to Lake Lugano, then?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “Tomorrow’s boat train, if my maid can get everything packed up in time.”

“But what about this house?” I wanted to ask “What about me?” but I was too proud to do so.

She shrugged, as if this had only just occurred to her. “I’ve paid the rent through the end of the month,” she said. “Feel free to stay on if you want to.”

That wasn’t the response I had wanted. For one heady moment, I had hoped that she’d invite me to Lake Lugano with her and we’d continue with her autobiography on a vine-covered terrace overlooking the lake with a pot of good coffee or maybe glasses of champagne beside us.

“What about your book?” I asked. “Aren’t you going to finish it?”

She laughed. “Oh, darling, it was such a silly idea, wasn’t it? I don’t really want my adoring public to know the sordid details of what I’ve been up to, and as you saw for yourself there’s not much I can divulge without fear of lawsuits. I don’t know why I wanted to do it in the first place.”

“I do,” I wanted to say. You wanted a reason to spend some time in London with your only daughter. I felt a lump come into my throat.

“Come on, get your coat on,” she said, attempting to drag me up from the table. “That food isn’t fit for man or beast anyway. We’ll get something out.”

“Where are we going in such a hurry?”

“Shopping, of course. I have nothing to wear that’s suitable for a Swiss lake. Harrods or Barker’s, do you think? Both so stodgy and English, aren’t they? I wonder if I should stop off in Paris for a quick run on Chanel? Of course, Coco won’t be there. She’s bound to be at her villa in Nice—or on someone’s yacht.”

My thoughts sped back to the heady time the year before—Mummy’s villa, Chanel’s dresses; so many adventures. I wondered what it would be like to be the kind of person who mentions casually that she should make a quick run on Chanel. I did at least own one Chanel outfit now, plus some elegant clothes that Mummy had bought me, and it occurred to me that it was rather pathetic of me to feel so let down.

I followed Mummy into the front hall as she threw a blonde mink stole around her shoulders and placed an adorable cloche hat on her head. I shouldn’t be relying on my mother, I told myself. I should be making my own way in the world. Actually, there was nothing I wanted more. God knows I had tried. But the world was still in the grips of the Great Depression and there were no jobs even for people with oodles of qualifications. My education at a posh Swiss finishing school had only equipped me to walk around with a book on my head, to curtsy without falling over (most of the time) and snag a suitable husband.