‘Now tell me, Miss Gillies, how have you found it since leaving your home?’ the countess asked her interestedly.

Images raced through her mind: Poppit flying through the air; Mhairi collapsing on deck; a sheet hanging across a dank bedroom; Mrs Buchanan’s open hand; the butcher’s swinging carcasses; shiny cars, mirrors, stairs, a pretty rug . . .

‘There’s been a lot to learn,’ she replied. ‘And the more I’m seeing, the more I’m realizing how much more there is to learn. I’m only just beginning to understand now how very small our world was.’ Her eyes skated over to Sholto again but he was still staring at the ground.

‘It didn’t feel like that at the time?’

She shook her head. ‘No. It felt like we were the whole world. We didn’t know what we were missing, because we’d never had it.’

‘Quite so. I’ve always said it – travel is so important for broadening horizons. The earl and I try to travel for at least three months of the year.’

‘Sholto and I had the most wonderful few weeks in Provence with Dickie Grainger,’ Sibyl said. ‘We all stayed in this sweet guingette that’s just reopened under a new name – the Colombe d’Or. They’re terribly keen on painters so we thought we might masquerade as some ourselves just for the larks, but Mr Picasso was there, which rather ruined the fun.’

The countess had a frozen smile on her face.

‘Then we went to Vence, just next door, naturally, to pay our respects to darling Lorenzo. So terribly sad.’

‘Who is Lorenzo?’ the earl asked, looking confused.

‘Why, David. David Lawrence.’

‘The writer, Father,’ Sholto murmured. ‘D. H. Lawrence.’

‘Oh—’

‘He died just a few months ago in Vence. The TB caught up with him in the end. His wife managed to get him out of the san the day before, but there were only ten people at the funeral. Ten! Isn’t it pitiful?’ Sibyl twirled a hand in supposed sympathy. ‘Anyway, it felt right we should pay our respects, didn’t it, darling?’

Effie’s eyes slid over to Sholto at the casual way Sibyl called him ‘darling’. He looked a little startled, but nothing more. This casual intimacy before his parents was apparently normal.

‘Yes.’ It was more a drawl than an enunciated word, as though the very effort was too much for him.

There was a pause. Effie was vaguely aware that Sibyl had hijacked the conversation away from her.

Seemingly, so was the countess. ‘And what do you like most about the mainland?’ she asked, as though the diversion through France hadn’t happened.

‘Umm.’ Effie thought for a moment. ‘Well, I do really like trees. And hot running water.’

Everyone laughed, as if she’d told a joke.