‘Christ! I am sorry, Florence. Inadequate, okay. But I am. My family, and James is a part of it, have been pretty bloody awful to you.’

She looked away, across to her mother’s wretched banana tree. Laughed. ‘Mama’s tree. How she cares for it. As I do Thomas. Cherish is the word. Your family, if you mean James, as you do, has not always been “bloody awful”. There were wonderful times, glorious happiness, magical moments which we shared together. I would never have known them without him. I won’t forget them. Never. But I have to forget James because I know he is dead. I know that. I told you. He will never come back, I would know if he was alive. He has gone. Just gone. I settle for that. In the war they say that women knew, quite suddenly, that their men had gone. Not taken prisoner, not just missing. But dead. We know.’

I sat down gently facing her; here came the cruncher. ‘I spoke to Millar’s sister. She lives in the little lodge. She saw James the evening that he left. In January. In the snowfall. He got into a car with an Alpes Maritimes registration. The bike is still in her shed.’

‘She said that?’

‘Said that.’

‘Oh sweet Jesus! Oh help me –’

‘He could be anywhere. In Algiers, in Tunisia, a boat from Nice, or from Marseilles. Even in America by now. Argentina, where Aronovich came from. He is still around.’

‘No. I would know. I would know. Why do you persist?’

‘Because I have to be certain. I have to know for sure if he is alive or if he has, as you feel sure, died. I must know.’

‘Why! What difference can it make to you? Go back to England, to your family, your work, leave me. Why won’t you leave all this?’

I poured my beer steadily into my glass, watching the thin head rise slowly up the side. It was almost full before I told her what I had wanted to tell her for some days.

‘Because I have fallen in love with you. I don’t “love you”, I am “in love” with you. A very different thing. Do you understand?’

She stared back at me; her eyes were as wide, as dead, with shock as those glassy ones in the head of a porcelain doll.

‘I am in love with you, Florence.’

‘Please don’t be. Please. Don’t be. It is impossible, it can never be …’

‘Too late for that, I fear. It is possible and it has happened. I can’t alter the facts, I don’t want to. I know it’s a mess-up, a muddle, but you might as well hear the truth for once. I am in love, idiotically, stupidly, all the paradigms you like. I can’t retract.’