Flo and I have struck up the beginning of a friendship, perhaps mainly based on the fact that my being in Paris hasn’t stopped her mother from babysitting Emma. In the past weeks, it has become a habit to stop by Flo’s at least every other day after Camille knocks off work, and we’ve often taken Emma home for the evening so Flo and Mathieu can have a quiet night together.

Because little Emma has lain on my shoulder so often, and I’ve looked into her wide baby-blue eyes for long stretches of time, I’ve grown surprisingly attached to her, and I can understand why being a grandmother is such an appealing proposition. Camille gets to spend all the time she wants with Emma—and every so often some time she doesn’t want—after which she gets to safely return the child to her parents.

“It’s all the good bits without the bad ones,” she said once, after Emma had been particularly fussy one evening, and we were both tired and looking forward to some peace and quiet.

I’ve even grown fond of Alice, my daily French drill instructor, who is a nice girl at heart, and whose task of teaching an Australian woman who has never spoken any other languages in her forty-seven years is not an easy one.

Ben has divided his time off university between Camille’s house, his father’s, the Provence house, and his apartment in Marseille.

At Camille’s insistence, Sylvie has resumed her old habit of dropping by unannounced for a cup of coffee on weekends.

The only person I haven’t met is her ex-husband.

I’ve gotten a good long look into Camille’s life and as the weeks have progressed, my conclusion about her never moving away from it has only grown firmer.

A few nights before my departure, with the pressure of time weighing heavily on me, I finally work up the nerve to ask her.

“Could you ever leave Paris?”

“Of course. I’m coming to Sydney for Christmas,” she says, not catching my drift.

“I mean permanently.”

Camille stops massaging my feet. We’re sitting outside on her patio, enjoying a beautiful August evening. According to Camille the summer has been unusually splendid just because I was in Paris. “Is it time for the talk?” she asks.

“Seeing as my plane leaves in about seventy-two hours, I think it might be.”

She purses her lips together and stares into the dusk for long minutes. “I don’t know, Zoya. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. Of course I have, but I can’t answer your question in a satisfactory manner. Maybe when Emma is older. Or when Ben doesn’t come home so often anymore. It is still kind of early days for us.”