‘And wore a tall black hat? Eh?’ She stooped, said something to the two women, lifted Thomas and walked back towards me. His arms were outstretched imploringly.

‘You have made a conquest,’ she said.

I took Thomas from her and sat him firmly on my knee. He switched round and stared up at me, the smile, like a melon-slice, cut across his wide, bland face, and then he settled himself hard against my chest, stuck his thumb in his mouth, swung a leg idly.

Florence sat in the little chair again. ‘You see. A conquest.’

Annette and Céleste stood at the edge of the terrace smiling a little uncertainly. I smiled back, doing my best to dispel their anxiety.

‘A conquest,’ I said, rather foolishly.

‘It’s so strange. Never with James, you know. He never did that with James. James disliked any form of … ugliness? I can use that word? He wouldn’t touch a dead bird. Sometimes the hunters maimed one – you know? – in the autumn. But he would never touch it. Or a dead frog or lizard, nothing dead.’

‘Thomas wasn’t dead. Very much alive.’

‘But ugly. You would say? Deformed. Imperfect. James disliked that.’

‘I never knew, but then I never knew him.’

‘In that photograph. Remember, the one on the beach, with the crab? He looked so funny, but really he disliked it very much. The crab. It was dead. He only cared for life; and beauty was life.’

‘He told you that?’

Florence sat forward, chin in her hands, a slight smile on her lips. ‘Yes. Often.’ She put out her hand and touched the child sitting on my knee. ‘Poor Thomas. What a shock you were. What a terrible blow! He is so calm. I have never seen him sit with anyone like this before … well, Annette from time to time, sometimes Celeste. You must have the touch!’

‘I was thinking, not so long ago, just how bloody I have been to my two. I’m pretty awful with children: I don’t like them much. I felt swamped with guilt the other evening. Perhaps this is making amends? You think so?’

‘I don’t know. I do know you are making him happy. He has spent much of his short life being rejected. I can only imagine that he wanted this security. He gets it from us, of course, the women, but you are the first stranger to offer him … love, I suppose?’

‘Yes. That’ll do.’

She rose, began to brush her skirt full of crumpled leaf, called to the two women, who had settled like a pair of frogs on a fallen log. Thomas started to wrestle and cry out when she reached, firmly, for him, and it took all our combined strengths, Annette’s and mine, to shove him into the car. His howls made further conversation impossible, but I managed to yell to Florence that I had decided to move into the house.