Joan passes the pack back to me and though she is careful, and my hands are ready for them, one of the thick cards tumbles between us and falls face down, on the grass.

‘Oh! Sorry,’ Joan exclaims, and quickly picks it up.

I can feel a whisper, like a cool breath down my spine. The meadow before me and the cows flicking their tails in the shade of the tree seem far away, as if we two are enclosed in a glass, butterflies in a bowl, in another world. ‘You had better look at it now,’ I hear myself say to her.

Joan looks at the brightly painted picture, her eyes widen slightly, and then she shows it to me. ‘What does this mean?’

It is a painting of a man dressed in a livery of blue, hanging upside down from one extended foot, the other leg crooked easily, his toe pointed and placed against his straight leg as if he were dancing, inverted in the air. His hands are clasped behind his back as if he were bowing; we both see the happy fall of his blue hair as he hangs, upside down, smiling.

‘ “Le Pendu,” ’ Elizabeth reads. ‘How horrid. What does it mean? Oh, surely it doesn’t mean . . .’ She breaks off.

‘It doesn’t mean you will be hanged,’ I say quickly to Joan. ‘So don’t think that. It’s just a playing card, it can’t mean anything like that.’

‘But what does it mean?’ the other girl demands though Joan is silent, as if it is not her card, not her fortune that I am refusing to tell.

‘His gallows is two growing trees,’ I say. I am playing for time under Joan’s serious brown gaze. ‘This means spring and renewal and life – not death. And there are two trees; the man is balanced between them. He is the very centre of resurrection.’

Joan nods.

‘They are bowed down to him, he is happy. And look: he is not hanged by his neck to kill him, but tied by his foot,’ I say. ‘If he wanted, he could stretch up and untie himself. He could set himself free, if he wanted.’

‘But he doesn’t set himself free,’ the girl observes. ‘He is like a tumbler, an acrobat. What does that mean?’

‘It means that he is willingly there, willingly waiting, allowing himself to be held by his foot, hanging in the air.’

‘To be a living sacrifice?’ Joan says slowly, in the words of the Mass.

‘He is not crucified,’ I point out quickly. It is as if every word I say leads us to another form of death. ‘This doesn’t mean anything.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘These are just playing cards, and we are just playing a game with them. It is a pretty card, the Hanged Man. He looks happy. He looks happy to be upside down in springtime. Shall I teach you a game with counters that we play in Champagne?’