So the misunderstanding between Papa and me is over. And now, all I can think is that I should never have held my resentments so hard for so long. For we are a family reunited now for just a brief time. Papa and Dorian plan to return to Paris next week and take Grignons de Camargue with them to hand over to Papa’s gallerists in the hope they might find a buyer. I will stay behind at Flamants Roses. For this is my home now, and Paris seems a lifetime ago, so perhaps I may never return.

***

It is extremely frustrating to me that Rose’s diary finishes there on this page. I have turned the pages over and over, hoping that somehow new words will miraculously appear on the blank sheets.

I don’t know why the diary ends so abruptly. I like to think that this is because her life became so fabulous after that she didn’t have time to write in it any more. It is one of life’s ironies, I think, that we keep diaries just when we are at our most boring, and when things get truly interesting we are too busy. I certainly didn’t have time for a diary now! I put Rose’s hardbound text back in my bag carefully nestling it there for safekeeping and kept walking.

The light was turning golden and it was that time of day when everything looks prettier than usual. I crossed at the lights heading across Bayswater Road to Hyde Park Mews. These were the stables where the black-and-white cobs that I had once painted to gain entry to the art school lived. It was a pretty cool place to keep a horse. From these stables it was just a quick two-minute ride to reach the bridle paths and arenas of Hyde Park. I remember watching the riders on their horses heading back to the mews after they’d been hacking through the park and thinking they were the luckiest people in the world to have their horses right here in the city. I never thought for one minute that one day I would be one of them, that I’d be able to keep my own horse here too.

“Maisie, hi!” Bonnie the stable girl gave me a wave as I walked through the cobblestoned yard. “I thought it was your exhibition today?”

“It was,” I said. “I left early. I wanted to take him out for a ride while the light was still good.”

Bonnie laughed. “He’ll be pleased. He’s missed you today. I mean, you’re always here and I think he was in a sulk when I did the feeds today instead. He turned his rump on me.”

I laughed. That sounded like my horse all right. He was fiercely loyal. All his life, he’d only had two owners. The first had been the Célestins, and now – now Claude had me.