Thomas stretched out his arm again, head to one side, smiling, bounced up and down on Florence’s lap.

‘He’s getting heavy now for you,’ said Madame Prideaux. She set her cup and saucer down, slowly got to her feet, brushing crumbs from her creased skirt, tucking in the loop of hair. Hands on hips she surveyed us.

‘Can I look at the house? It is some time since I did? Curious, you see?’

At the cars Giles held on to Thomas, who was about to scream with fury at the end of his afternoon, but Florence opened doors and Thomas and Céleste were pushed into the back. Thomas by this time was howling his rage.

Madame Prideaux was pulling on her gloves. ‘The house seems to me that it is smiling again. You understand? You have worked hard.’

‘Not really. Just shoved things about with M’sieur Simon and his sons.’

‘Get rid of all those canvases up in the hayloft.’ She had lowered her voice, keeping one eye on Florence, who was talking to Giles. ‘Then you will have a splendid room.’

We shook hands and she got into her car and began to back in a rather alarming way down to the turning-place.

‘She’s not very good at it,’ said Giles.

Florence laughed. ‘Not at all good. Very bad. We let her go first so that if she has an accident, you know? – we are not too close to her, but close enough to help if we must.’

‘A huge bash in her mudguard.’

‘We must paint it.’ There was an agony of crashing gears, Florence covered her ears with her hands and, laughing, slid into her seat, started the engine, wound down the window and slammed the door.

‘Thank you, William, Giles, for the tea.’

We stood watching Madame Prideaux ease into the road and then move off in a series of sputtering jerks towards Bargemon-sur-Yves.

We waved until they had disappeared behind the hedge.

‘I’ll have to do a bit of trimming one day. Oh lor’ … Thanks, by the way. Very good, Giles. Not easy.’

‘He’s a nice little boy.’

‘Yes. Rotten, isn’t it, to be born like that?’

‘He doesn’t know, though. Does he? That he’s different?’

‘No. Don’t think so.’

‘I think he’d get quite used to me, don’t you? Then we could go to the stream, I know he’d like it. The woman could come too, for safety, but I reckon I could manage.’

‘I reckon that you could,’ I said.

I asked Madame Mazine to get me Aronovich’s number in Cannes, washed, found a change of shirt and was buttoning it up when the phone rang. To my surprise it was not the Arab voice this time, but Aronovich himself.

‘It’s William Colcott. I’m delighted to hear you.’