After leaving Bargemon-sur-Yves the road begins to wind down to the plain, and I was stuck behind a large cart, pulled by an ambling ox, which creaked down the slight hill. An old man, sitting on a pile of sawn logs, waved cheerfully and spat from time to time into the stone walls which ran alongside. He was not about to hurry; nor, for that matter, was the ox. I had learned early that the one essential word one had to learn in Provence, and accept instantly, was the word ‘patience’. In the post office I had only once become greatly frustrated, wanting only one stamp, by an aged woman in black who was paying for a parcel in every tiny coin she could find at the bottom of a crumbling leather purse. Each coin when found was very deliberately placed on the counter, counted, steadied, and then the search would continue. Frustration mounting I tried to lean over her humped figure to gain the attention of the postmistress for my single stamp to England. The crone grabbed my arm and hissed furiously, ‘Patience!’ I decided to ration my letters to Helen and the children from that day on.

I finally passed the trundling cart and went through the greening pines, shimmering now with pea-green buds, and reached the gates of L’Hermitage.

Martha was there. Beyond her, far up the drive, Daniel was slowly raking back the gravel scattered by a convoy of cars.

I pulled into the gateway, caught Martha’s attention with a wave. She was planting in a large stone urn, eye-patch, red handkerchief in her hair. She looked up, recognized me, came slowly towards the gate.

‘They’ve left. Three hours ago. For the airport at Marseilles.’

‘I want to see you. Not them. Possible?’

She shrugged, rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, a plant firmly held. ‘I’m putting out the bedding-plants. Petunias. Early, shouldn’t do it before the 25th in case the iceman cometh. Okay, come on in.’

‘No. Don’t open the gates. I can speak through them.’

She started to unlock them. ‘I refuse to talk to you through bars. We aren’t in prison. Yet.’

I followed her and watched her dig in the last petunia. Then she sat on an upturned crate. Reached for a cigarette in her jeans pocket. ‘You haven’t come to sell me a subscription to anything. Of that I am perfectly certain. Sit down. Take that box, it’s empty.’

I upended the box she indicated and sat in front of her. She lit a cigarette, slid the lighter into the breast pocket of her shirt.

‘If,’ she said, carefully removing a thread of tobacco from her upper lip, ‘if it has anything to do with up there, or him, the Adonis with the rake, I don’t want to know. I don’t know, and I never have known. End.’

‘Indirectly, it has.’