‘She’s sleeping. Best let her get on with it.’

‘Yes,’ said Osbourne. ‘Sleep’s the great healer, I suppose. I shall see you later, Ella.’

‘Thank you for playing with me,’ said Ella, who had been carefully drilled in the importance of such remarks. She took Una’s hand and together they went into the cool of the house. Una said goodbye to her in the living room. She was running late for an appointment in Nailsea. A young haemophiliac with Kaposi’s sarcoma. Mother going out of her mind. Afraid to sleep. Asking why all the time. Why him, why us. Why why why.

‘Be a good girl now,’ she said. ‘Keep an eye on them all till I come back.’

Ella waited. When she heard the front door shut she switched on the television and started flicking through the channels, though without a remote control she wasn’t sure at first how to do it, and even when she had worked out how to use the buttons she couldn’t find MTV. She settled for a cartoon, and had curled herself on to the sofa to watch it – the manic pursuits, the crash-bangs – when her father appeared, wrapped in a white towelling bathrobe, the wash bag in his hand. He switched off the television and knelt on the floor in front of her.

‘We have some talking to do,’ he said. ‘Some very serious talking.’

6

The evening that followed his meeting with Emil Bexheti, László dined with Kurt at Marco Polo’s on the rue de Condé. Asparagi di campo, risotto alia sbirraglia, tortellini bolognese – all the good things. Then they walked home together, hand in hand, past the church of St Sulpice and along by the side of the Luxembourg. It was a little after twelve. A scattering of stars showed faintly above the lamplight, and the air was redolent with that mix of gutters and public gardens, tobacco smoke, restaurant steam, and the sour but somehow likable breath of the Métro exhaled through broad grills in the pavement, which give to Paris nights their inimitable savour.