Ginie put her hand on his. It was not unusual for Stephen’s sleep to be disturbed by terrible dreams. She knew things shifted at night, tipping him back into places he would rather not revisit. His face had taken on a look she recognised, as if he were being eroded from within. Don’t shut me out, cried her heart. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again.

Her pet lemur, Mah-Jongg, appeared and Ginie felt a comforting tug of love. Stephen had bought Jongy at Harrods for her. He was a curious creature; a mixture of monkey, cat and squirrel, with a long black-and-white striped tail.

‘Good morning, sweetheart,’ she said to him. In the light, his eyes were blazing amber. She lifted him onto her lap, where he nestled against her stomach, cheeping and chittering until she stroked him into stillness. She ate a pawpaw, feeling the bland, creamy flesh fill her belly. Jongy jumped down and lapped at a saucer of milk, making tiny sucking sounds as his pink tongue curled around the rich liquid. Occasionally he paused and gave a sigh like an old man.

The Courtaulds’ nearest neighbours were the Thompsons. They farmed pigs and small-scale maize and their land bordered La Rochelle, though their house was three miles away. After breakfast, Ginie sent a boy across with a note in her favourite emerald green ink, asking if they would join her for afternoon tea.

Jill Thompson arrived promptly at three thirty. She was a large, fair-haired woman, whose damp, pink face suggested that she found the heat a trial. They had tea in the parlour, a grand room that was built – as Ginie explained – to accommodate the carpet, one of the largest Persians in the world.

Jill looked all around. It was crammed with objets d’art: pottery, china, jade, crystal, silver, gold, lapis lazuli, onyx and enamel. There were watercolours and oils, tapestries and sculptures of marble, teak and ivory. There was a huge fireplace and hanging above it, a portrait of the Courtaulds at Eltham Palace, their last English home. They were formal and unsmiling. Stephen was wearing a velvet dinner jacket and perching on the edge of a desk with paperwork in his hands. Ginie was dressed in a low-cut red gown with a fur stole draped over one shoulder. At the centre of the painting was Jongy on the arm of Ginie’s chair, his ringed tail flowing over her lap. The patterning on his tail mirrored the strands of pearls around her neck, but despite this congruence, the lemur cut a startling figure against the rich furnishings.

The many windows of the parlour looked out over the garden and hills. The vast African sky arched over everything but they could hardly look at it, for it was blinding at that time of day. Two of the windows were covered by signatures, engraved using a diamond stylus: it was a glass visitors’ book.