‘What about typed letters?’

Monsieur Bisset said that typing was for lunatics and criminals. ‘No respectable citizen would contemplate such a thing.’

I wondered what Deb’s envelopes had revealed about her. ‘Do you know how to interpret foreign handwriting?’ I asked.

Monsieur Bisset replied that it was a grave misfortune to have been educated outside France. But he added in a fatherly tone that there was still a great deal of hope for new countries like Australia. The fate of older civilisations could be studied and precautions taken against undesirable outcomes. Here, everything was finished. If the Socialists won the elections the following May … To take his mind off that catastrophe, I asked him more questions about graphology. His eyes were a dog’s eyes, a soft, meaty brown.

Minna showed me photos of the installation she’d been working on when she broke her arm. It was called Permanent Red (for John Berger). She’d made faithful copies of paintings analysed by Berger and had scribbled over the results with red. Hals’s regents had bloody hands; blood stained their snowy collars, dripping from their eyes and mouths. Wyeth’s Christina had a dark red patch on the back of her skirt. Gainsborough’s Mrs Andrews held a skinned, red child on her lap – there was a bloody mess around her mouth because she’d bitten off his head. Looking closely, I made out the red outlines of bodies, the kind the police chalk around a corpse, on the Andrewses’ land. What Gainsborough had painted was a crime scene, said Minna, shoving the photos about on the table. ‘The Inclosure Acts seized common land and gave it to rich people. The poor who’d farmed there had to try to find work in factories or starve.’ She gathered up the photos, squaring them like outsize playing cards, and put them away.

That was when she told me that her mother was an art historian. She’d written a groundbreaking book about Charlotte Perriand. I confessed that I’d never heard of Perriand.

‘She’s an architect and a designer. She applied to work in Le Corbusier’s studio, and he told her, “We don’t embroider cushions here.”’

Another thing Minna said was that her mother was very shy. ‘She’s capable of ringing me, saying, “It’s your mother,” and hanging up.’

‘I’d love to read her book.’

Minna said, ‘Oh, I didn’t bother bringing that.’

When Minna and I went wandering around the city on weekends, Nick stayed at home – working, Minna said. I assumed that he was planning lessons or reading ahead for the final year of his degree. Then Minna told me that he was writing a novel, adding in a warning tone that he didn’t want people asking him a heap of questions about it.

She’d once said that there were days when she didn’t get out of bed – it struck me as shockingly lazy. But she’d also mentioned a project that involved taking photos of mannequins, although she rarely carried a camera when we went out. I asked her now if she worked on her project while Nick was teaching.