That first night Lâszlô slept for thirteen hours and felt his life being rearranged in dreams. He was not quite familiar to himself. He was shedding a skin, discovering, in his fifty-ninth year, a self still supple with life.

The next night, a waning moon rose over a city in thrall to rhythm. It was the Fête de la Musique, and every bar, each café large and small – French, Brazilian, Arab, Russian, Vietnamese, even those little places on the side streets where a good night’s business was half a dozen glasses of mint tea or screw-top rouge – were suddenly reckless with music and dancing. Brass bands, flamenco, crooning black-eyed chanteuses, every kind of drum imaginable. No need to go anywhere to dance; enough to find space in the road and start to sway. By ten o’clock many of the roads were impassable but no one complained. The police kept out of sight, parked up somewhere, smoking and teasing their dogs. It felt like the end of a war, but more democratic, more personal, as if everyone had won a war of their own, a private war against a private enemy, emerging – for a night at least – victorious from the long campaign.

For László, squeezing with Kurt through the throng on rue Oberkampf, only one difficulty remained, one last stone in his shoe. Laurence Wylie had called while he was away, had wanted him, had said she needed him, and then, finding he was unavailable, had become angry and rung off distraught. Several times since his return he had tried to call her back but had succeeded only in talking to the answerphone, where the sound of her voice delivering the speak-after-the-beep message had pierced him. It was intolerable that such a woman should go under, intolerable and unjust and wrong. In his last message, left that afternoon, he had told them both to wait in at the apartment. He would come to them. They would open a bottle together. Stay in, go out. Whatever they wished.

Privately, he was determined to share his new energy with them, his new faith. His new manliness! And if he could get them out tonight, surely they would find themselves stepping a waltz – they had loved to dance, had been the kind of couple other dancers stopped to admire – and then they would remember laughter and lightness and the times before, and their poor bruised hearts would begin to warm.

At rue St Maur, they pushed through the ranks of a small salsa orchestra and walked to the rue du Deguerry, where they knocked for several minutes at the door of the Wylies’ apartment. László shrugged, but he was becoming agitated. Where the hell were they?

‘We could try Le Robinet,’ said Kurt. ‘If they’re out drinking they’ll show up there sooner or later.’