Céleste nodded, jigging about uneasily as Thomas pulled and swung himself in her grip.

‘Give him to me,’ I said, and settling back on the grass beside his mother, I took the struggling body into my arms and forced him to sit. Which he did instantly, leaning back against my side, thumb to his mouth, the trumpet forgotten in the trodden grass, his head heavy against my chest.

Céleste sat down slowly, a bunch of wilting flowers in her hand, not too close, near enough to come to my assistance if needed but just out of earshot. Tactful Céleste had seen the residue of tears. She knew distress when she saw it.

‘Florence, just how much of what I have told you did you know?’

‘Much. Not all. At the beginning, not at all. Not even with the faux wedding, with … Jojo. I was suspicious. He always hinted that his life in Paris had been … different. That he came to Bargemon to escape, I knew that. I believed that I could make it right. Could make it work. I suppose every woman thinks that? It is in our instinct to heal. To help. And I was …’ – she shrugged, wiped her face with her hand, touched Thomas gently – ‘impossibly, wonderfully, in love. Alas. Idiotically in love. The very first time in my life: there had never been another man in my remotest dreams. I was poor Florence, the sister of the wonderful brother Raymond. My life would be to remain at home, look after my parents when they grew old, become the spinster daughter. You know? Raymond was the idol. I accepted that perfectly easily. Girls do.’

‘And then James?’

She was holding Thomas’s hand, raised it to her lips, kissed it. ‘Then James. I had never known anyone like him before. I was lost. Quite lost. He made the world so light! So brilliant, so possible …’

‘And then Thomas.’

‘Thomas. That was a terrible time. At first, just at first, we did not realize what had happened. There is a test – it is called the four-finger-palm test. Then we knew. In the beginning – oh, I don’t know – we were hopelessly inexperienced. A baby was a baby. All babies are the same? My mother was uneasy. In Algeria she had seen a lot of children: she was in a children’s crèche. She had suspicions.’

‘And when you knew?’

‘When we knew, when it was certain, from that time on James began to die. He was convinced, as I told you before, that he was to blame.’

‘But it was a question of chromosomes. It could be in you, in him. It is not certain.’

‘James was certain.’

‘And he went back to Millar? To Jojo, to his previous life?’

‘Yes. After that we separated. He moved to a little room, apart.’

‘But you must have known what was happening, seen him?’

Thomas’s head was suddenly heavy against my arm; he had fallen asleep.