‘Not yet,’ Mum told us. ‘Like I said, we wanted to tell you girls first.’

The waiter arrived with the Armagnac Mark had ordered, a large dose of thick amber fluid in a large balloon-shaped glass. I could smell it from where I was sitting. A memory came to me of Dad holding a tumbler of the same stuff in one of the flats he’d lived in, at Christmas-time. He’d held it up so that I could see the thin streaks of clear fluid, like water but thicker, clinging to the sides of the glass.

They call them tears, he’d said. The tears of the Armagnac.

He’d said it admiringly, as you might if you were talking about someone or something you were in awe of. It was as if the Armagnac was a person, and a powerful one – one of those terrifying rulers from the olden days, fond of feasting and also of abruptly ordering executions, then regretting his actions when it was too late.

‘I’ve never tasted Armagnac,’ I said to Mark.

‘You probably wouldn’t like it. You’re a bit too young for it,’ he said.

‘I suppose.’

He regarded me as if I’d asked for a favour and he wasn’t sure whether or not to grant it. Then he reached across and picked out a sugar cube from the pot the waiter had brought with my coffee. He dunked it into the Armagnac and then held it out to me.

‘The French called this faire un canard,’ he said. ‘Which means “to make a duck”. I’ve no idea why.’

I took it and popped it in my mouth. It was like nothing else I’d ever tasted: so strong, so sweet, so… wrong.

Wrong or not, I sucked it and crunched it and swallowed it all down.

Part of me wanted to say, What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you know I’m the daughter of an alcoholic? Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might be the teensiest bit susceptible?

But then, I hadn’t even hesitated about taking it, and I knew as well as anybody where too many canards might lead. Perhaps it was a fitting tribute. See, Dad, I’m not betraying you. This is my way of remembering.

When we had finished Mum yawned and stretched and said, ‘How lovely that we can just walk away and leave somebody else to do the tidying up, and go off to bed.’

‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ I objected. ‘It’s much too early. You’re forgetting the time difference.’

Mum checked her watch. ‘It’s not that early. Ellie would usually be asleep by now.’

‘Yes, but Ellie’s eleven. I don’t normally go to bed at the same time as her, so why should I have to when we’re on holiday? It’s not like I’m going to wake her up when I go in. Unless she has a nightmare, she can snore her way through pretty much anything.’

Ellie frowned. ‘That’s mean.’

‘Yeah, and it’s also true. Look – there’s a bar here, right? What if Ellie goes to bed, and the rest of us go for a drink? Just one drink. That wouldn’t hurt, would it?’