This plan took me completely by surprise. Jack would be safely elsewhere and I would have a whole week to myself, so I could easily slip away to Suffolk.

As soon as I had said it, the idea hammered in my head. Auntie Angela, one of the very few aunties with whom I had kept in touch in that we still exchanged Christmas cards, lived up on the east coast. She had sent me a note of sympathy and had written that she wasn’t well enough to come to the funeral. If I went up to see her, I knew she would talk to me about the old days.

In all the years that had gone by, I had wanted to know less rather than more about our history: Ted’s and mine, and Faye’s. I felt damaged by it and wanted to rub it out, smoothing away the ingrained lines of bitterness. Memory was like having a bruise that didn’t hurt, so long as you didn’t press on it. But I was increasingly aware that Ted’s death had changed all that. The scent of the past fumed around me as thick as mist, rushing from the olfactory nerve to flood the cells and chambers of my head. It teased my subconscious and made me give public voice to plans that I hadn’t conceived even in my dreams. The trail was drawing me to Suffolk and reviving my memories of Grasse, and it seemed I had no choice but to follow where it led. My skin prickled and the hairs rose on my arms at the thought, and the faint but acrid odour of apprehension must have risen from my pores because Cassie stirred and began to whimper.

I’d forgotten, momentarily, about Mr Rainbird.

‘To Suffolk? If I weren’t escorting kids to Cherbourg I’d come with you.’

I was lifting Cassie to my shoulder and rubbing her back to soothe her but I did turn my head now to look straight at him. He had neat, unremarkable features and a mouth with a long top lip that looked tucked in at the corners, as though he were used to suppressing his amusement. There were fine laughter lines at the corners of his eyes too. He oughtn’t to have looked distinctive, given the ordinariness of these separate components, but somehow they added together to make a good face. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed this before.

He said quickly, ‘It’s where I come from. My part of the world, I mean. Near Ipswich. I could … I could have shown you some nice country pubs.’

I breathed in hard, making myself concentrate, and the distracting waft of perfume faded a little. ‘That would have been nice. But Cherbourg beckons, doesn’t it?’

‘Oh God, yes. Trying to stop them doing all the things school trips are really about for just long enough to pick up some French vocabulary or a few cultural impressions. I shouldn’t be saying this, should I?’