She was stiff as a rod. Ashen. Behind her, frozen in a tableau, stood Annette and, halfway down the wide staircase, one hand on the banister, the other at her throat, Madame Prideaux.

‘Thomas,’ I said. ‘I am your Uncle William.’ And kissed him.

I handed him back to Florence. He struggled violently, banged wildly about with the trumpet, screamed in a high strangulated pitch, his face contorted with fury, and then mercifully, because Florence was finding him difficult to hold, Annette swooped into the battle like a small hawk and with an agonized look at me grabbed him up and carried his screaming, spluttering, jerking body off into the dark beyond the staircase.

Madame Prideaux moved down into the hall, touched Florence lightly on a shoulder, inclined her head gently to me.

‘Shall we go and see my banana tree?’

In the conservatory she and Florence raised the rattan blinds and the spring sun flooded in. I remember all this as if it had happened in slow motion, like one of those films about natural history. Beans or sunflower seeds unfolding into life. The conservatory was obviously only used occasionally. For watering time.

Somewhere in the house the angry cries of Thomas were cut off with the firm shutting of a door and Madame Prideaux gestured vaguely to the scattered chairs. We all sat, rather as if we were attending the reading of a will. I felt slightly silly. Florence looked at her feet, hands clasped loosely in her lap, shoulders like a bottle. Resigned.

I began to try and apologize for my clumsy return to the house. Madame Prideaux cut in without waiting for me to finish.

‘You were not to know. How, possibly? It was not right that you should know, but now that you do … well … you do. So, there is nothing to be done. The only fortunate thing is that children who are born with this condition do not often survive for long. Nature is finally merciful.’

Florence shook her head, pushed her hair about, smoothed the skirt over her thighs.

‘It is not sure, Mama. Not certain.’

‘Nothing is sure or certain in this life. You saw, Mr Colco, that he recognized you as his father? The trousers. Not a woman in skirts with whom he is surrounded all his life. He misses his father very much. All the more because his father rejected him. Children are like small animals: if you push a cat away it will always try to come to you. It’s true.’

Florence looked up, smiled a wan smile.

‘I’m glad that you know. I dislike, very much, being evasive, lying. It is a form of lying, isn’t it? Everyone else knows, now you do too.’

‘Yes. Now I know. I’m – ’

She raised a hand gently. ‘Don’t try to be sympathetic. To apologize or something.’