Hélène had sat at his funeral while their baby turned somersaults inside her, unable to reveal herself as Sidney’s lover, able only to shed tears as a member of the Buckingham Hotel who’d known him for his music. She’d hidden the pregnancy well, flanked on one side by Louis Kildare and the other by Raymond de Guise, the only two men she’d trusted enough to tell. With their support she had managed to keep in the tears until nobody could see. Then, in the churchyard, she’d felt the bite of the wind and realised that she’d never hear him playing his trumpet again, that she’d never wake to see him grinning at her, that she’d never tell him that, when she danced in the ballroom, it was him she was thinking about, no matter who was in her arms. The devastation was absolute. Hélène’s world was a different shade of grey. When people spoke to her, she heard them only as if from a distance. The sun was gone, and in its place there was endless night.

It was only later that year, when Sybil gave her first cries and Noelle Archer herself lifted the mewling baby to Hélène’s breast – that sound, more real and beautiful than anything she’d ever heard in a ballroom – that she’d felt the grief subside. My daughter, she’d realised. The revelation was unique. The child had been growing for nine months – but only when she could see her face, touch her and feel her, did she understand. I am a mother – for now, and for the rest of my life. The enormity of it, the love and the fear that mingled in her, was almost too difficult to grasp. But she lay there that night and she knew just how right it was.

‘He would have been proud of you, Hélène,’ said Noelle. ‘Proud of you both. Let’s make it a Christmas to remember. He always loved your English Christmases. He’d want that for Sybil too.’

At that moment, Maurice Archer burst back into the room, brandishing not only his shovel but the most glorious smile. ‘Come and see!’ he said, and together the family followed him out to the yard.

In front of the house, where he’d cleared the path, the snow was piled high in what Hélène first took for a simple hummock. It was only as she carried Sybil around it that she looked down and saw it for what it was: a giant trumpet, sculpted perfectly from the fallen snow. It was the most wonderful thing.

*

By the time the first suppers of Christmas Eve were being served in the Buckingham Hotel, Billy Brogan was loping back across the river. Over his shoulder was a haversack and, wrapped up inside, the perfect Christmas surprise: a single suckling pig. He could almost taste it now.