He collected the bottle, the glass, and went into the long room, setting them down on a chest by the door, looked about him, noticing the flowers, the posters, the Indian bedspread. He was smiling, nodding approvingly, when he said, ‘You are intending to stay here perhaps? To settle?’

‘I might. It depends on many things …’

‘All life “depends” on something.’ He had turned to leave and stopped. Looking up at the canopy along the chimney-piece. ‘There it is! Is it the same one?’

‘The same what?’

‘The family by the seaside. It was always in the studio, on a little shelf, like an altar almost. In Paris he had it in his studio. I was sad just now to find that it had gone. Is it the same one?’

‘The same. Different frame, that’s all. He destroyed everything else.’

‘I know. I thought that perhaps this –’ He stopped, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, stood, head bowed, in silence for a moment, looking away from me. ‘Would you let me copy it? Very quickly? I could get it done today, mail it back to you tonight. It is something I would treasure. He cherished it.’

‘There are a great many photographs of James in the Brent Millar archives. I have seen some of them.’

‘I do not speak of those things. Or of that time.’

‘Is this how you knew that I had dark hair? That it curled?’

‘That is how. It is much the same, after all the years.’

A little breeze rustled through the leaves of the vine, a warning perhaps of the mistral to come. It faded and as if from a distance I heard Giles’s voice.

A lizard trap. I’m making a lizard trap.

I took down the photograph, wiped the glass with my cuff, gave it to him. ‘Okay. But mail it back tonight? I have no other. You swear to do that?’

He held the frame between both hands, his fingers splayed. ‘I swear. Thank you; really, thank you.’

‘I can’t imagine why I trust you.’

He shook his head. ‘The wily Jew? But you can. I assure you.’

We walked together down the path to the gate, past bee-ridden clumps of chives, the fennel, the first scarlet cups of the poppies shimmering in the long grass. At the rusty gate he stopped, the picture close to his chest. He turned to me as if to speak, thought better of it, shook his head, walked on.

‘I wonder’, I said, ‘why he didn’t destroy that photograph with all the other stuff? Or take it with him perhaps. I mean, if he so cherished it, as you said?’