I didn’t want to believe this. I would sell my soul before I believed it, I would let Cosette gallop back into the fire before I believed it. I would have to walk away from André if I believed it, so no, no, I rejected his lies. To believe him would be like tearing out of me all that made me a Caussade.

‘Gilles Bertin is dead,’ I announced.

‘Now who’s lying?’ he sneered.

‘He has a bullet in his chest. Inside his own house.’

It was in my voice, the small voice of truth that rings clear as a bell, and he heard it. His face became rigid and his heavy lips drew back to bare his teeth. I felt nothing but grim pleasure to see the shockwave ripple through him and I threw what was left of my brandy in his face. He stumbled to his feet, cursing me.

‘That’s for Mickey Ashton,’ I told him.

‘That piece of Yankee shit deserved to die. He was feeding technical information to the Russians. So when I was ordered to put an end to him, the protest march was the perfect cover. Bertin’s idea.’ The mention of Bertin stopped him in his tracks. ‘Start counting the fucking hours, lady, because you haven’t got many left, I promise you.’

I watched him go, pounding down the crooked side road back into the old town where Bertin’s house lay. And with every footstep I heard the last few links that held the Caussade family together snap apart.

*

Clarisse placed a glass of cognac in my hand and wrapped my fingers around it, but it was going to take more than that to shift the chill inside me.

‘What has happened, chérie? You look sick.’

‘I’m not sick.’

We were seated on a dainty chaise longue in Clarisse’s hotel room. A magazine lay open on the bed, her shoes had been kicked off under the coffee table, her reading glasses abandoned on a satinwood chest. The normality of it gave me something to cling on to in a world that had been spun upside down.

‘You were meant to stay at home, Eloïse, not to knock yourself out running around Arles on your own. I promised your policeman, remember?’

I laid a grateful hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t lecture me, please, Clarisse.’

‘Bad day?’

‘As bad as it gets.’

‘Are you going to tell me what happened?’

Her green eyes watched me over her glass with such affection that I came close to telling her it all. Everything. Needing to pour the poison out of me. Instead I swigged down the cognac and rose to my feet.