The midday heat is bouncing back at her from the walls. By the time she reaches the port she is calmer. Perhaps Harry is simply scared of what’s to come: the truth is he doesn’t really recognise her and she shouldn’t be so upset. She orders a coffee and a glass of wine at Le Voilier. The patron knows her and he comes out from the dark depths to offer some olives and propose – Je propose – a very light bourride. ‘No thank you, Jean-Loup.’ His name is a lot more sportif than he is.

‘Comme vous voulez, Madame. Milord s’améliore?’

‘Oui, je crois, un peu mieux chaque jour.’

Actually, Milord is not ameliorating himself at all. Quite the reverse.

The yacht basin is coming to life after the winter. In their self satisfied way the yacht owners and crews are ferrying supplies out to their boats in small dinghies; decks are being varnished, sails pulled from lockers and the restaurants all around are sweeping and polishing and cleaning. There is a nice domestic atmosphere. The big motor yachts now tie up at a huge quay built to accommodate a Russian oligarch’s new boat. Graft is suspected.

The Bar Sport opposite is always busy with locals – who don’t own villas or yachts, but make a living supplying them – toping away from seven in the morning. Sometimes they take a whole hardboiled egg with their petits vins blancs or petits vins rouges. The prevailing fiction is that lots of small glasses of wine don’t add up to anything much. Their faces are fired like bricks. They laugh a lot, but it’s the whistling-in-the-dark laughter of drinkers, tinged with self-knowledge. Around them, at home and here in the bar, are sensible women who clean and cook and tidy and are always, in contrast to their men, bustling. These people – the last peasants – are united in their dislike of North Africans: the narcissism of minor differences, Freud called it.

She sees Bryce walking up towards the bar. He catches sight of her.

‘G’day, Lady Fleur.’

‘Hi, Bryce.’

‘Drinking alone?’

‘I’ll buy you one.’

‘Bonzer.’

She thinks he must get his Aussie slang off the web.

Jean-Loup appears smoothly. Bryce orders a beer.

‘Jeez, I’m hungry. I could eat the crutch out of a low-flying duck. Let me have the bourride, Jean. What about you, Fleur, why don’t you have lunch with me?’

‘OK, moi aussi, je prends la bourride.’

‘So, how’s Sir Harry?’

‘Do you want the official version or the truth?’

‘You choose.’

‘He’s not doing well. He may have to have a kidney removed.’

‘Oh, jeez, that’s crook.’

‘Bryce, could you lay off the Aussie schtick. I know you were at Geelong Grammar.’

‘Geelong Grammar, my arse, I was at the school of hard knocks.’

‘That’s not what I heard. How’s the boat?’

‘All done and dusted.’

‘Can we take her out?’