Madame Lesert came down the steps. She was wearing a coarse apron and wiping her big hands on a cloth. She was short, not much taller than me, wide-hipped with thick, strong legs and feet sheathed in dusty clogs. Her corrugated grey hair was tied up under a printed scarf. I learned later that she was a widow who ran her husband’s fields of flowers grown for the perfume industry with autocratic efficiency. Philippe was her only child and she was protecting his birthright. She patted my shoulder in greeting. ‘Alors, Sadie, bienvenue.’ She pronounced it Sad-eee. ‘Tu as faim?’

She didn’t speak a word of English. All through the weeks that I lived under her roof her remedy for my shyness and melancholy and homesickness was food. Tu as faim? I can hear her voice now, and smell her thick vegetable soups and good roast chicken.

I had been travelling for over thirty-six hours and Angela’s angora had moulted over everything I was wearing. I nodded and managed a watery smile.

She took me upstairs to my bedroom. It was at the top of the tall house and it had a wide view over the fields. There was an iron bedstead, and a china ewer and basin on a wooden stand, and as I looked around I was so interested in it all that I forgot my misery for a minute or two. Madame left me to unpack my few clothes and I put them away in an old-fashioned clothes press, then Philippe called to say that le déjeuner was ready. I sat opposite him and next to Madame, and we ate tomato salad that tasted of pure sunshine. They must have seen how exhausted I was, because they didn’t ask questions or bewilder me with information. They ate slowly, exchanging a few calm words, and I knew at once that this was how they always behaved together and that I was accepted. I listened and watched the sunlight on the bare stone floor and felt some of the stiffness leak out of my body.