‘Oui. These are Julian’s neighbours,’ she said, pointing to the older couple on the right of the picture, ‘Madame and Monsieur Petit. And the man here, talking to the redhead, is Alain Jacques, a friend from the village. He’s a builder. He helped Julian with the house when he moved here.’

‘And the redhead?’

‘She is Alain’s wife. I don’t recall her name but I believe she works at the local school. And that girl was a family friend of Julian’s who stayed with him that summer.’

The dark-skinned girl talking to Alain’s wife looked to be in her mid-teens. She wore a shapeless black shirt over black leggings and had her afro hair pulled back in a wide plaited bun. ‘This girl was staying with Julian?’

‘I think she may be a friend of his stepdaughter.’

‘Julian has a stepdaughter?’

‘In the UK, yes. They are not so close these days. It was a source of sadness for Julian. Her mother remarried, found the girl a new stepfather, I suppose.’

‘How long did this girl stay?’ Bloom indicated the picture.

Isobel shook her head. ‘A month or so, maybe more.’

‘And do you know when she arrived?’

‘Not long before this was taken and this was my fiftieth birthday. So July 2015. About then.’

‘Can you recall her name?’

Isobel thought for a moment then apologized. ‘My memory is not what it was.’

‘Why do you think Julian posted this on his Facebook page?’

She shrugged in a very French way, elegant and refined. ‘He always posted these memory pictures whenever they came up. He was a sentimental old fool.’ Isobel’s eyes filled with tears and she drank the remainder of her coffee.

After saying goodbye and promising to update Isobel when they had news, Bloom called Jameson. He answered immediately and she wondered if he was getting bored of his babysitting duties.

‘Did you need to go to France?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you have spoken to her on the phone?’

Bloom smiled to herself. He was definitely bored. ‘I wanted to see her expression and I wasn’t sure my French would hold up on the phone.’

‘I could have done it. I’m literally sat here with nothing to do.’

It had occurred to her to ask Jameson to speak to Isobel. But she didn’t want him to know where the contact number for Julian’s lover had come from. ‘How’s Harry doing?’ she asked. ‘Any luck with the photographs?’

‘What do you make of this?’ he said. ‘When I showed Harry the photograph of the guy in the white shirt, he said he could remember someone wearing their epaulettes the wrong way around. But we don’t know when the memory is from. Could he have remembered something from that night, do you think?’