But now, becoming a little flushed as the chilli in the soup sweeps through her and the red wine races indiscriminately about, she feels a surge of optimism.

‘Great bourride,’ says Bryce.

‘Bryce, do you ever worry about the future?’

‘Never. I just go from day to day.’

‘You just go from day to day? That’s it?’

‘More or less.’

‘And women? Girls?’

‘Loads of those wherever possible.’

‘And what are you going to do when that stops?’

‘Why would it stop?’

‘Well, slows down.’

‘Plan B.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Dunno. I’ll think of it when I have to.’

‘Great.’

He stops eating, a loaded spoon suspended against the harbour.

‘Fleur, what’s your real question?’

His eyes are hidden by his dark glasses and his lips, permanently flaked by sunshine, are lightly smeared with aïoli.

‘I just don’t know what’s going to happen to me if Harry dies. Now you tell me the boat’s been sold, that and one or two other things have upset me.’

‘You’ll be OK. You are a lovely woman and rich. You’ll be fine.’

‘Will I?’

‘Of course you will. You’ll find someone in minutes.’

She wonders if this can be true. She understands that she is one of those women whose purpose seems to be to live through men. She hears her friends talking of how they want to be independent and study literature or travel to the Hindu Kush, but she has noticed that these elevated thoughts usually arise only after some man has let them down. It’s particularly true of those who have made disastrous choices, which all the friends could see would end in a train crash. And it’s something to do with getting a little older, that you can see this sort of thing a mile off, even when the protagonists can’t.

‘I’ve always thought you were totally gorgeous,’ says Bryce, in a matter-of-fact way.

‘Bryce, what a lovely thing to say.’

‘But I couldn’t do anything about it. As we say in Australia, never dip your pen in the company’s ink.’

‘But now that you are employed by a Russian oligarch . . . Is that the sort of thing you were thinking?’

‘Spot on.’

When she gets home, the turtle doves are winding down. Their calls become more liquid and diffident as the sun begins to set. The sea is darkening and that wonderful haze of gold, beaten to thinness, is lying beyond the Cap, so that the Mediterranean looks as though it is encased in a dome that doesn’t extend beyond the limits of the classical world.

She rings the bell at the villa’s gate: Emma Bovary is home. The housekeeper lets her in.