Yes, Nicole told him, yes it would. Her plan was coming together. She spoke again to David Fisher and he got busy writing a news update straight away. By midday the International Tribune had put a close-up picture of my painting on their website with the announcement that the painting of Claude the Hero was to be one of the lots in tonight’s auction at Lucie’s.

By afternoon the international media had picked up on this story too, and it had gone around the world. My dad phoned me.

“Your painting,” he said, “is on the cover of The Times.”

It’s funny to think now that once upon a time, this would have mattered to me. I mean, what artist wouldn’t want to see their painting make headlines around the world? But my art career was not what mattered now. I was still thinking about Claude and hoping that the rest of Nicole’s plan would succeed.

Nicole had told me that Lucie’s would be very fancy. I didn’t have any clothes good enough, but Françoise had come to my rescue and lent me a dress. It was black with silver threads that frayed at the hem. She lent me shoes too, so I looked very much like the rich women who crammed the front rows of the auction room to take their seats. Except they held their bidding paddles in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.

“It’s good for the bidders to have champagne,” Françoise muttered to me as a gaggle of rich old ladies fanned themselves with their paddles, “Maman says it loosens the purse strings.”

In a cloud of blond-haired socialites on the far side of the room I saw Augustin. He was looking very arty and serious this evening. He wore a beret without a hint of irony, and while everyone else was in suits he was in paint-stained overalls, just to prove the point, I think, that he was a proper artist. It seemed quite pretentious to me. When he saw me across the room, he hastily drew the conversation with the posh ladies to a close and hurried over.

“I have been backstage to see Claude up close,” he told me. And I thought for a moment that he meant the horse, but then I realised he meant the painting.

“Do you like it?” I asked him.

Augustin hesitated. “No,” he said. And there was a vacuum, an airless moment between us. “I don’t like it,” Augustin said. “I don’t think one can ‘like’ a work as powerful and important as this painting. I don’t like it. I am in awe of it. It is the most exciting work of art any of my students has ever produced in the entire time I have been teaching at the Paris School.”