She has to accept that his speech is becoming harder for others to understand, despite the therapy. But as he becomes more isolated, he also becomes more cheerful. Now he’s waving happily in the direction of the dinghies, which are moving quite quickly on a flat sea. Here on the headland, sheltered by the garden, they feel no wind. She has cut a few oleander flowers and three small roses and she holds them up for his approval. He chooses a pale, faintly green rose, which she sticks through his buttonhole and fastens with a pin. It looks just right with the jacket. He is unerring in his taste.

He doesn’t want to write letters today. She goes into the house to make sure the driver knows what he is supposed to be doing and to be sure that the lunch menu is working as planned. Once she wrote acerbic memos to bank CEOs and dealt with begging letters from cabinet ministers; now she is a housekeeper. A carer. She hates the word. She stations the day nurse, Sylvie, in the garden, not too near to annoy but close enough to keep an eye out, and returns to her little house and her catalogue of paintings. Picasso once lived in Antibes and left the commune many paintings and drawings, but Harry has never been to the museum. He detests Picasso; daubs compared with Matisse and Cézanne. Some of his pictures are on loan and she has made it her business to remind the museums that they must all be returned. Her database of his pictures and their locations, as well as their provenance, place of purchase, and the cost price, is almost complete. The collection, before the slump, was worth $150m. on paper and probably a lot more in reality. He hasn’t mentioned them in his will and she guesses that this is one of the things Julian wants to discuss. Of course both the boys and Fleur will want to know where the pictures are going. The problem is that Harry left it too late to decide, but Estelle will interpret. Estelle is willing. She replies to an email from the head of the Kunstmuseum, Köln, refusing permission to extend a loan.