The lunch was like any other reunion between two people who haven’t met for almost forty years. There were points of recognition so intense that it seemed as if no time at all had intervened and there were huge chunks of separate histories to sketch in. Philippe told me he had sold the family land, most of it for real estate development. There was no money to be made from growing flowers for perfume; synthetic perfume essences are produced in labs using coal tar and petroleum, and where real flowers are used they are mostly imported from India or Egypt or Thailand. A tiny soupçon, he said, of jasmine de Grasse might be added if the accountants’ figures allow for it.

Philippe now worked as a marketing director for one of the big perfume houses. He spread his hands and his eyebrows made the circumflexes I recalled so vividly. ‘I am all to do with figures and product these days, and nothing to do with the land or with flowers. Maman was the last of us to live the old way.’

Marie-Ange Lesert had died nine years ago. After that, Philippe sold the remaining few hectares of cultivated land to one of the last three jasmine farmers left in Grasse. ‘It’s all gone, everything that you and I remember,’ he said. His dark eyes were so shiny that I thought he was about to cry.

‘And I do remember it so well,’ I said. Madame with her red, brawny arms and her feet in clogs, the smell of cooking and jasmine and roses, and the calm welcome she gave to a withdrawn English teenager. I would never know, now, what her link had been to my father. She must have loved him in some way, for some reason, and she had taken in his daughter out of love because I had felt it all round me in the old farmhouse.

The champagne was going to my head. ‘You were the first love of my life,’ I told Philippe. ‘Did you know that?’

He inclined his head, smiling. ‘One should always notice these things. And not act on them, in your case. You were far too young and a guest besides.’

I found that I was blushing.

I told Philippe about how I loved paper and print and old books, and he listened and watched my face.

‘I think you must very much resemble your father. You have the same vitality of intention, the devotion to your materials and methods that a perfumer must have.’

The warmth that suffused me wasn’t just because of the champagne. Was I like Ted? I was startled to realise it, but I was flattered by the comparison. ‘Do you know anything about him? Do you know how your mother and he were connected?’