“Take deep breaths, that’s it,” Nicole told me as I crouched with my head between my knees trying to get my equilibrium back. Then she grabbed a waiter from the café, spoke charmingly to him, and I saw him scurry off. A moment later he’d brought us back a chair for me to sit on and a tall glass of fizzy water for me.

“Here, drink this.” Nicole passed me the glass and I knocked it back in a single gulp.

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Oui, oui, Petit Chou-chou Anglaise,” Nicole soothed, “but take a moment first to catch your breath.”

“Do you feel well enough to go back inside now?” Nicole asked me. “This is your moment of glory. Your work is going to fetch a record price, I think.”

I had thought she understood. “I’m not going back in,” I explained. “I don’t care about the painting. I want to go back to Claude,”

Nicole gave my hand a squeeze. “I understand completely,” she said. “Who cares about a room full of bourgeoisie? Tonight of all nights, you should be with him, no?”

I felt bad to be running away. “I’m not being ungrateful, Nicole … I know how much this means to you …”

“Don’t be silly, Chou-chou!” I felt her arms around me, smelt her heady oriental perfume as she embraced me. “Go to him now! We have done what we can but if these are truly to be his final hours, you should be at his side.”

And then I was running, my legs like jelly underneath me, lungs feeling like they would burst. All the way down the boulevard Henri IV to the gates of the Célestins.

Alexandre, of all people, was on guard duty.

“Maisie?” He dropped the newspaper he’d been reading. “I thought you were at the auction?”

“Alexandre, please? May I come in?”

Alexandre frowned. “You shouldn’t be here, Maisie, not now … They will be coming for him soon.”

He gave a sigh and reached beneath the desk of the sentry box, pressed the button and the automatic doors swung open.

“If the guards come, you make yourself invisible, yes?” Alexandre said. “You are not here.”

“I am not here,” I confirmed. “I am a shadow.”

“That’s my girl,” Alexandre said. And then, with a wave of his hand, “Hurry now! A shadow moves quickly! Go to him!”

There was a moment, outside Claude’s stall, when I could not bring myself to open the door. But what kind of friend would that make me if I could not confront whatever I found in that room? And so I slid the bolt and stepped into the gloom.

He was alive! And at the sight of me he raised his head and gave a nicker. I fell to my knees beside him, saying his name, cradling his mighty head in my arms.