It’s French, I said. It’s beautiful. Soon, I said, you’ll sound like that too. She buttoned her lips at this, frowning. No, she said.

Oui, I said, and laughed.

We were only at the hotel for a week maybe, but the hours there passed like a dream, one opening easily onto the next, like an endless stream of French doors, all linen curtains, gentle breezes and light. M left the hotel early for work. Every morning he wore one of his new suits. B and E and I luxuriated in our jet lag. We slept when we wanted to and lingered late over the hotel breakfast. We spread berry jams from tiny jars onto thick slices of bread we cut ourselves from loaves the size of suckling pigs. Three-minute eggs came to the table with their own tiny spoons if we asked for them, their tops just waiting to be cracked. Pistachio nougat could be cut from a large block and brought to the table, likewise, if we asked for it, as could hot chocolate, as could bacon, as could pieces of honeycomb sliced from an actual hive.

We went out exploring. Exploring in a proprietary way I suppose, not like tourists. Well we weren’t, tourists I mean. We were home. We crossed back and forth over the lake, traversing the jaunty zigzagging bridges. We walked by the jewellery stores that rose in a glaring white wall, springing right out of the glittering lake. Tiffany, Bulgari, Piaget, Harry Winston, Chopard, Graff. We peeked inside to look at the beautiful ladies who were selling, at the beautiful ladies who were buying.

E stared hard through a window at a little girl about her own age. The girl wore a pink fur vest over a belted dress. She sat very still in a tufted chair. She was watching a woman in a black tailored suit slip watches onto her mother’s slim wrist. At least, I imagine the woman was her mother. They wore their hair in similar loose waves. A shop assistant offered the girl a chocolate but she shook her head. E watched this as if stunned.

We stopped at each display window to see the latest and the best. For you, E said to me, as we walked along, pointing at all the sparkling things. The necklaces that looked like chandeliers or snakes. The bangles and watches and rings. For you, for you, for you, she said and I smiled at her my biggest and my best smile, the one that told her, I am so happy, don’t you see how happy I am. You have a happy, happy mother, my smile said. We are a happy family in a beautiful place. I pushed B along in his stroller with one hand and said to her, Thank you, I love you, thank you, I love you, thank you, I love you.

We walked along the backstreets too. Twisting, when the mood struck us, further into wherever we happened to be. We wandered past little run-down cigarette kiosks and underneath scruffy buildings shuttered in yellow and green. Walking behind the Parc Bertrand I looked up and saw an old woman on a mouldering balcony watering her geraniums topless. Her magnificently sagging breasts brushed the tops of her pink and red blossoms, deadheading them maybe.