‘No, but we’ve seen each other before. It was last winter, your girlfriend had just died and you had come on a pilgrimage to the island where I live. I decided to contact you because I wanted to ask you why you chose to go there in particular, and not somewhere else?’

‘But who are you?’

So I gave him my family history, leaving out the ‘eavesdropping’ part when we had all been on the boat together which had kicked off my investigations.

‘So, let me reiterate my question: in your opinion, does this family know we even exist?’

‘To be honest, I’d be surprised if they did, otherwise I would have heard them talking about you and also, knowing them, if they had found out at the time that one of their own had officially recognised a newborn who was not from their social class, they would have had him knocked off quick smart. Especially as, if I’ve understood correctly, your grandfather was legitimately able to claim his share of the inheritance. And when it comes to money, frankly, nothing gets in these people’s way as far as I can tell.’

‘So what was it all about, that pilgrimage? Just coincidence?’

‘Not really, no! We had said that one day we’d all go there as a bit of a private joke. Alice had a book at her place that came from her parents. The sort of self-published literary shit spouted out by some family ancestor that you feel obliged to keep at the back of your bookshelf for generation after generation. She used to say it had been her sexual education and sometimes, to give us a laugh, she would read us passages from it. It describes the absolutely filthy details of an orgy that takes place over several days during which sex-starved Amazons force themselves on some poor explorer. They squeeze every last drop from him and he ends up dying from exhaustion and ecstasy having inseminated every girl of childbearing age. A sort of pornographic Jules Verne: The Adventures of Count Mogador in the Land of the Amazons by a certain Jules de Brassac. And the action takes place on your island.’

‘Well, would you look at that, he passed completely under my radar,’ I thought to myself.

‘And your girlfriend’s aunt and grandmother, do you ever see them?’

‘Not at all. I only ever caught a glimpse of them on the yacht where Adrienne would host her parties. Nobody in that family was ever very interested in me. But if you want to see them, it’s not hard. The old lady has lunch every day at the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée clubhouse. I know because I took Alice there on my scooter several times when she had to be on duty. Don’t turn up in jeans. Apparently that’s a complete no-no.’