“Correct. And that’s my brother. He was the respectable one—in those days. I was the artist.”

“In your twenties.”

“Yes.”

“Very handsome.” She considered a moment, and chose her words. “It looks the perfect bourgeois wedding. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

He chuckled.

“That describes the Blanchard family, all right.”

“Would you excuse me a moment?”

He indicated a passage. “Down there on the right.”

It took her a minute or two to collect herself. James Fox had married a member of the Blanchard family. It was too great a coincidence. This must be the same Blanchard family who knew who her father was. Probably one of themselves. And if her father was a Blanchard, then the obvious candidate was just a few feet away from her.

And then, suddenly, she wanted to cry. So it had come to this: she’d almost found her father after all. But either it was this man, who now knew, or someone else whom he would tell, that she was a whore, and that Luc the cocaine dealer was her pimp. This was her life. What sort of welcome was that likely to earn her?

She sat very still. She did not allow herself to weep. But she saw her situation with icy clarity. If she didn’t do something, she was about to sleep with a man who was probably her father.

She had to get out of there. Fast.

It was the first conflict Claire had experienced with her mother. But the conflict was silent, unspoken, never acknowledged. How could it be?

In the first minute, as she had walked down the lawn away from Frank and her mother, she had experienced only cold shock. By the time she’d entered the house, she was shaking. But as she wandered in the street, another sensation gradually began to take over.

Anger. Rage. How dare her mother try to steal her young man? She wasn’t going to let her do it. She was young. She had good looks. She’d show her mother. She’d take Frank Hadley from her.

But powerful though the feeling was, it didn’t last for long. By the time she passed the local parish church, it changed to a sense of hopelessness. Frank Hadley didn’t belong to her. He’d made no sign that he wanted her at all. It seemed he wanted her mother, and perhaps he was going to get her.

There was nothing she could say. So she said nothing.

And her mother didn’t say anything either. She carried on calmly, as if nothing was happening at all. If she’d raised the subject, she knew what her mother would say: “He’s flirting with me.” She’d shrug. “It’s amusing, I suppose.” And what could she say in return? Protest that it was disgusting? Then her mother would guess that she was jealous, that she wanted him for herself, but that he didn’t want her. Why should she expose herself to that defeat?