‘Perhaps? It is so difficult for me, English. When I come back there is a letter. It says he will go away to think. Alone. Maybe some weeks, many weeks. If he did not come home on the last day of March, the three one of March, then I must send the package to you and go away to forget him. He would not come back again. Not ever.’

‘You have no idea where? He has not written to you?’

‘I have no idea what?’

‘Where he went to? No letter since?’

Again the short laugh without humour. ‘No letter. Nothing. I do not know where. He tell me nothing. To go away is all.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It happens. He was not happy man, James, not happy with me, with the house, with work.’

‘Did he not sell his work? He was quite successful, you know, in England.’

‘Sell? Ah yes. Some work he sells. To an Argentinian man for his hotel he makes in Cannes. It is by the sea, you know? Cannes. Far away.’

‘I know.’

‘This Argentinian man, he sells many works to him for this hotel, maybe, oh … many. All in the studio are for this man when he makes his hotel finished.’

‘For the apartments? The bedrooms? Do you mean that?’

‘Is the Cannes Commodore Hotel, I know. They will be everywhere. It is modern hotel, you know. He is making it now nearly.’

A package deal of pictures for the hotel reception and rooms. A cheerful prospect for the guests, I couldn’t help thinking, but he must have paid for them, so there should be some money. I didn’t feel, at that moment, and in this rather stilted conversation, and in English, with which she was clearly not very familiar, that I should pursue any more personal questions until we were free of Maurice. So I just said something trivial about being almost at the village, and how pretty the day was and how big the cliffs behind the village were.

‘Very high, yes,’ she said. ‘On the top, very much away, is a small place, we call it a “hameau” … I do not know in English.’

‘Hamlet perhaps, a few houses, very small?’

‘Very small. Not so many houses. Once there is a castle, but now not. It is called a funny name, Jericho. You know this place in the Bible?’

‘I do … the walls of Jericho. I know that.’

‘Is what they are called, the cliffs, the Jericho Walls, because the invaders – you call them this? – the Arabs, the Romans, the Greeks, all kinds, could not get to the hameau, so it was safe. You understand me? I speak awful.’

‘You speak very well. I understand perfectly. Le Pigeonnier has a sign on the gate: it is called “Jericho” also?’

‘Ah yes. James made this. He called the house “Jericho” and he made all the walls to stop people coming. You know?’