I hadn’t seen Darcy again since he left me at the hospital. I lay back and closed my eyes. I wondered if Jean-Paul had been arrested or if he’d managed to slip away. I sort of hoped the latter. In fact, I learned next morning that he was nowhere to be found. Much later it transpired that he’d taken the choicest pieces of his art collection, chartered a yacht and gone to America, where presumably he’d do very well for himself.

Chanel and Vera moved out to Coco’s own villa, and Jacques Germain went with them. Granddad, Mummy and I spent some pleasant days together as I recovered. Darcy stopped by to visit every day. When I had sufficiently recovered he brought Bridget and little Colin. As I lay there, I thought a lot about Jeanine. I grieved for her and for what might have been. She and I shared the same father, but had led such different lives—mine full of hope and expectation, hers full of disappointment and the struggle to survive. Would I have fared as well if our situations had been reversed? It simply didn’t seem fair. Our father could have done more, I thought. He could have brought her to stay with us. We could have become friends. But even as these thoughts passed through my mind, I knew that they could never have happened. In our world, a piece of paper made all the difference, dividing the legitimate from the illegitimate.

At the end of the week, Granddad came to sit beside me on the terrace and told me that he was thinking of going home. “If you’re well on the road to recovery, that is,” he said.

“How about you?” I replied. “You seem a lot better already. Why not stay until you’re completely well?”

“Don’t you worry about me, ducks. And it’s not that I don’t like it here. Smashing, isn’t it? But it’s like living in a dream world, and I miss my little house, and I like to keep busy, and I don’t feel right here. This is a place for posh people and their servants. So I don’t really fit anywhere, if you understand.”

“I do,” I said. “Do you need me to come home with you, so that you find the way?”

“Find the way?” He chuckled and gave me a pretend punch. “I’ve found my way through plenty of London fogs and a person who can do that can get around anywhere. No, you stay and recuperate properly, ducks. I’ll be just fine.”

“I’ll miss you, but I’ll never forget that you came to help me when I needed you.”

“I didn’t do much, did I?” he said. “Didn’t exactly earn my keep.”