I reversed my route back to the coast and parked the car facing a wide shingle beach. I walked to the water’s edge and turned towards the sun, stepping aside from the waves and following the spits of hard wet sand that lay between the shining stones. I was thinking that I could go back to London and resume my life. I could take the view that Ted was gone and I had grieved for him in my way, after a fashion, but now it was time to move on.

That wouldn’t be the truth, though, and I had an appetite for the truth after so long.

I didn’t know why Ted had concealed so much from me. I didn’t even know what had made him so harsh in his handling of a child. He wasn’t a bad man, you know, Angela had said. He didn’t want anything to touch you. He wanted to keep something nice.

I was harsh in my response to him too, because that was the adult way I had learned to contain the past and its deficits. All I had seen was his selfishness and his charm, that poisoned and perfumed chalice, directed everywhere and at everyone except for me. But it was possible that what Angela said was true and, given this new chink of insight, I began to think that maybe he had loved me in his own way and had done his best to protect me. The search I had involuntarily embarked upon was a way of finding out what had really happened between us. And when I had done that, maybe I would be able to forgive him.

I walked on, following the curve of the beach. I began thinking again about Grasse.

I reached the Gare du Nord in Paris at midday the next day and climbed awkwardly down from the high carriage with my suitcase bumping my shins. I hadn’t slept on the ferry crossing – there had been no sleeper berth for me and I was afraid to close my eyes in the crowded lounge. For two frozen minutes I stood looking at the unfamiliar signs and listening to station announcements that I couldn’t understand. Then a woman who looked a little like Valerie from Scentsation appeared. She said in strongly accented English that I must be Sadie Thompson and I was so relieved to be rescued that my eyes filled with tears.