As Hélène fumbled in the depths of her bag, he turned away, expecting the worst, but what she pulled out was not a doll as he’d feared, but a glossy square of paper. ‘I don’t show this to just anyone,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. She unfolded the square and smoothed it out on her lap. ‘These are my children. Well, two of the three anyway. Lucinda and Marcel, aren’t they beautiful?’ She passed him the sheet. ‘Careful, it’s quite fragile.’

The page had been torn from a magazine, a glossy tabloid by the looks of it. Tatler, perhaps, or Paris Match, magazines he’d only seen when buying a newspaper at the kiosk. An advertisement, apparently, for a brand of high-end clothing, depicting a beautiful young woman with gazelle-like limbs and a cascade of sleek blonde hair, gleaming white teeth, green eyes. The boy next to her, leaping onto a pile of autumn leaves, boasted the cheekbones of a Greek god. Behind the dazzling pair, a blue sky framed the distant hills. Wealth, beauty, privilege. A glass-fragile world, easily broken. Look but don’t touch.

Poor woman. What had gone wrong in Hélène’s mind that she believed these two perfect specimens of the human form were her own children? A type of dementia, surely. And perhaps the rumours were true. Her child, or children, had died, and in her grief, she had projected their spirits onto the fashion models in a lifestyle magazine.

He handed her the page, worn and creased with age. ‘Your daughter is the spitting image. And your son, what a charmer.’ Getting trapped in the web of her delusions was the last thing he needed, and he sought an excuse to get away. Was he the only sane one amongst the bunch? But it was too late. A tea tray arrived, brought in by a woman who Vidor recognised as one of the staff from the dining hall. For the first time, he saw her as a person, rather than a nameless member of staff, and smiled as she set the tray on the table. ‘Thank you, Miss…?’

‘Kamila.’ She smiled. ‘Can I get you anything else?’

Her glossy black hair hung in a plait down her back, and her warm eyes were lively. For some reason, his vision today was sharper, his hearing more acute. Of course, Isabelle, his art guru, would take credit if he were to admit to his heightened senses. But that was nonsense, it had nothing to do with art. The film that had separated him from the world, dulling his senses, was indeed scrubbed away. But that was surely due to a change in medication. Or perhaps they’d replaced his daily tablets with sugar pills. That could only mean one thing: he was going home.