I yearn for texture, scent, taste,

but feel nothing, not even my own fingers.

They passed the boxwood hedges of the Parterre du Midi, scattering robins and pigeons, then over to the Parterre du Nord, with its verdurous, striped lawns.

‘Majestic surroundings can take one’s mind off other preoccupations,’ Stanley mused aloud. Such as a dying father, was his afterthought. Jessie met his wistful smile with stretched lips, whose spread northwards to the eyes was as impossible as scaling a sheer cliff without crampons.

I go for a dip, without getting wet,

burrow into pungent earth

where pineapple once grew,

recalling the time when I had to eat.

I lift myself over espaliered trees

and sail through lofty walls.

Stanley did not see the dark nun glissade down the slope beneath the palace, but, out of the corner of his eye, he imagined he saw a large black bird descend with extended wings.

It is where I like to dream

of Mother and the African dwarf Nabo –

rumour had it, he was my father.

In the Orangery, there were paths lined with the perfectly snipped Afros of hundreds of small orange trees. Like a line-up of Motown singers in repose, Stanley said to Jessie, who appeared not to hear him.

They entered the Grand Apartment, its seven rooms dedicated to the seven planets. The Room of Abundance, where coffee and liqueurs had been served. The Mercury Room, which had once been brimming with gaming and music. Stanley tried to envisage the aristocrats, courtiers and hangers-on, those whose bearing would acquire a new dignity upon entering a residence that surely demanded expansion of its swanning classes, and considerable athletic stamina from its serving classes.

He found his back stiffening, legs gliding. An imperious expression flitted across his face. Jessie was the queen at his side. Or should have been.

But here in this monument to grandiosity and pomposity, hunched forward in a navy-blue windcheater, the spring had broken in her feet. She would never be revered. Or glorified. Or mythologized. Billie Holiday. Edith Piaf. Bessie Smith. Not.

She wanted Stanley to notice her mood.

Great houses reminded her of St Ann’s Children’s Home, the Victorian mansion high up in the hills of Leeds run by the Sisters of Mercy, whose greater love was for God but with a generic love for all mankind. She remembered the do-gooders whose smiles were undisguised vehicles of condescension and pity, the prospective parents who would pat her head, marvel at the bounce of her hair, but never chose to take her home, to love her, unconditionally.

No one understood. Not Stanley. Not no one. And no one ever would.