He spread his hands. ‘I’m so sorry, no. I never thought to ask maman. But this is why you are here in Grasse, isn’t it? Now he is dead and you are mapping his history, because it is a way that you can make him live.’

‘Yes.’

‘I remember the same, when maman died. There are all her boxes of papers and her trinkets at my house, and I keep them for no reason except – ha – they were hers. Stéphanie thinks I am a little crazy, but then her parents are both still alive. She is not yet in the forward line and she doesn’t see the dark so much ahead of her.’

There were crumbs scattered over the white cloth and a crumpled paper napkin next to my empty coffee cup. We had finished the champagne and we were the only diners left in the restaurant. I was thinking about Jack and Lola, and the brightness they spread through my life. ‘It isn’t all dark.’ I smiled.

Philippe covered my hand with his. ‘No, of course it is not.’

He called for the bill and when he had paid it he asked, ‘Would you like to come and pay a little visit to the old place?’

‘Yes. I’d like that very much.’

We drove in Philippe’s BMW down the hill from Grasse to the valley road and turned right across the valley floor. The road was lined with villas and pizza parlours and opticians’ shops but Philippe cut through the traffic and turned left at a roundabout, and we came past a stretch of scrubby land on a road that was suddenly rural.

‘Oh, look,’ I said in surprise.

‘You remember.’

The dusty road made an elbow bend beside a broad khakicoloured river fringed with willow trees. It was where Philippe and I used to go fishing on limpid August evenings. There was a dilapidated wooden gate and a broken wooden sign that I didn’t have to read. The house was exactly the same, too tall, blinkered with green shutters and set in a patch of trodden dust edged with nettles and clumps of goosegrass. There were still apple trees against a low stone wall, but the ramshackle construction of old packing cases and wire netting where Madame Lesert had kept her chickens had been replaced with a modern corrugated-iron henhouse.

The flower field had shrunk to a tenth of its old size and now it lay within a corral of holiday homes and garden swings and swimming pools. But some of the jasmine and centifolia roses still flowered, and the scent of them was the same as it always had been.

I had been happy here, and the warmth of the place and its people had offered me reassurance when I needed it. The Leserts had given me the resolve to go back to London and my life with Ted.