A look passed between Mum and Mark – a look I couldn’t quite read.

‘OK,’ Mum said. ‘I’ll take Ellie up to bed, and you can go to the bar with Mark and I’ll come down and join you once Ellie’s settled. You’d better have a mocktail, though, something non-alcoholic.’

I shrugged. I didn’t want anyone thinking that I’d only wanted to go to the bar so I could have another drink, as if the canard had whetted my appetite, as if I was already on the slippery downward slope to turning out like Dad. It wasn’t true, anyway. I just wanted to have some fun, for once. Was that such a crime? I was on holiday, in France, and it wasn’t as if my everyday life back home was full of adventures and treats, so why shouldn’t I make the most of it?

‘A mocktail would be fine,’ I said.

‘All right, fine,’ Mark said. ‘We’ll go to the bar, have a nightcap.’

The waiter arrived to start clearing our table, and Mum and Mark exchanged unreadable glances again.

‘Come on then, Ellie, let’s get you to bed. It’s been a long day,’ Mum said.

She leaned forward to kiss Mark – on the cheek, not the mouth – a quick, darting kiss, accompanied by a tight squeeze of his arm.

‘I won’t be long,’ she told him, getting to her feet. ‘You can order me a mocktail, too.’

Mark said he would, and Ellie reluctantly stood too and went off with Mum. Just before they reached the exit she glanced back over her shoulder at us; she looked resigned and resentful and fearful all at the same time.

And then they were gone, and it was just me and Mark sitting at a suddenly empty table.

It might have felt awkward if the wine and the canard hadn’t taken the edge off everything. As it was, I felt able to say something close to what was on my mind.

‘I hope we’re going to manage to find something to say to each other till Mum gets back.’

He looked startled. ‘I should think we’ll manage.’

We stood at exactly the same time and made our way out of the restaurant together.

The bar was flashy and busy – lots of purple velvet plush, black lacquered furniture and mirrors. There was a piano player in a dinner suit playing a baby grand on a raised dais in one corner – soft, old-fashioned jazz, cheerful and melancholy at the same time. Everybody else looked right at home and elegant and expensive, like they spent their whole lives lounging round in places like this, sipping from frosted glasses and laughing idly at nothing in particular.

I couldn’t see anywhere to sit. If I’d been on my own I would have walked right out again. But Mark spotted an empty booth near the piano and homed in on it. As I followed him I was aware of people lazily, appraisingly turning towards me. The piano player – some old man, or old-ish, anyway – raised his head and gave me an ironic smile as I went by.