The door opened a few inches. “It is I, Robert,” she said. “I have someone with me. Let us in and then leave us alone. We want to talk.”

We stepped into the nightclub. The chairs were still on the tables and it smelled of cigarettes and old wine. Along one side there was a mahogany bar with leather-topped bar stools and at the back was a stage with red velvet curtains. The only light came from a dirty window on one side that looked out onto an alleyway. One half of the window was open and the cold breeze stirred the curtains. The person she had called Robert had vanished.

Jeanine took down two chairs. “Sit,” she said. “Do you want a cognac or Pernod?”

“Nothing, thank you.”

“I think I need one,” she said, and she poured herself a glass before sitting opposite me.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How can we be sisters? My father’s first wife died soon after Binky was born. My mother certainly only had one child.”

She looked at me, her lip curled in scorn. “You think all children are born on the right side of the blanket?” she demanded. “Our father came to the Riviera after his first wife died. He was enchanted by my mother, who was a famous dancer at the time. I was born. For a while he was enchanted with me too. He set us up in a nice little house and came to visit us often and all was well. Then he met your mother and he married her—although she too was not of his station. We heard that he had a proper daughter now—a legal daughter. He hardly came to see us anymore. You were now the apple of his eye.”

She was looking at me with undisguised animosity. I didn’t know what to say. I was still stunned by the word “sister.” A small voice inside me whispered that I had a sister. I who had longed for a sister during my lonely childhood was now presented with one and she was looking at me with hate.

“And then the war came,” she said. “And France was occupied by Germans. The English did not come to the Riviera anymore. There were no millionaires, no clubs. It was a hard time for my mother. She needed someone to take care of us, you see, so there were several new ‘uncles’ in my life. A German officer once, and then an Italian who was probably a smuggler and a crook. When the war ended, our father came back to visit us, but my mother was with this Fratelli at the time. I was no longer the adorable little girl but an angry, awkward twelve-year-old. So Papa went away. He did not think he was welcome anymore—which was perhaps true.”

She looked at me for understanding now. I nodded.