But every Easter my father led one of his beloved black bull calves up into the wilds of nowhere and slit the poor creature’s throat. I always watched for his return, clinging to the top rail of our fence and to the desperate hope that this Joseph – or whatever Old Testament name I had bestowed on the condemned animal – would return this time. But no. My father stumbled down the mountain alone, hands steeped in blood.

I never knew what he was atoning for and I never asked. He had named his younger son Isaac, though we were not Jewish. It meant something. Like the blood meant something.

But I didn’t know what.

But even with Papa’s curses ringing in my ears I’d come to Paris and now I could smell danger on André. Sour as cat’s piss, and I was frightened for him. Beside me he swivelled in his seat to study the traffic behind us, but all that was visible was a blur of headlights. The darkness curled around us and white fingers of fog rose up from the River Seine, ready to snatch away familiar landmarks.

Soviet Intelligence had a liking for the use of black cars and there were plenty of those in the city. Hairs prickled on the back of my neck as I drove. André glanced across at me – did he sense my nerves? – and in the flicker of the sulphur-yellow light from a streetlamp, I caught one of his rare smiles, his long jaw softening. His skin and his hair were the colour of sand, his jacket too. He claimed it made him harder to pick out in a crowd. But I could spot him anywhere.

‘Lose them,’ he whispered.

Who them were, I didn’t know. But I knew Paris and its secret places. I had learned every one of them. I swung the wheel hard and my car mounted the pavement, scattering pedestrians like confetti, narrowly missing a domed pissoir with an alarmed occupant. On Rue de Richelieu with its coin shops and formal grey façades I squeezed the car between the narrow walls of a side alleyway meant for nothing more ambitious than a cat and my offside wing squealed in protest as a layer of its skin was peeled off. I knew the city’s byways the way a spider knows its own web. From the grand thoroughfares of the Champs-Élysées to the cobbled mean streets of Montmartre up on its hill and the nooks and crannies of the Latin Quarter’s bars and cafés on the Left Bank, I had walked them all in my sleep.