So, one morning I took Rosette and fled by taxi to Les Laveuses. The hostel was cheap and impersonal; a single room with a gas fire and a double bed with a mattress that sagged almost to the floor. Rosette was still reluctant to feed, and her voice was a pitiful plaintive mew that seemed to echo the wail of the wind. Worse still, her breathing would sometimes falter, stopping for five or ten seconds at a time, then hitching back with a hiccup and a snuffle, as if my baby had decided – if only temporarily – to rejoin the land of the living.

We stayed in the hostel for two more nights. Then, as New Year approached, the snow arrived; dusting the black trees and the sandbanks along the Loire with bitter sugar. I looked for somewhere else to stay, and was offered a flat above a little crêperie run by an elderly couple called Paul and Framboise.

‘It’s not very big, but it’s warm,’ Framboise said – a fierce little lady with berry-black eyes. ‘You’ll be doing me a favour, keeping an eye on the place. We’re closed in winter – no tourists here – so you needn’t be afraid of getting in the way.’ She looked at me closely. ‘That baby,’ she said. ‘It cries like a cat.’

I nodded.

‘Hm.’ She sniffed. ‘You should get it seen to.’

‘What does she mean?’ I asked Paul later, as he showed us our little two-room flat.

Paul, a gentle old man who rarely spoke, looked at me and shrugged. ‘She’s superstitious,’ he said at last. ‘Like a lot of old people round here. Don’t take it to heart. She means well.’

I was too tired then to enquire further. But after we had settled in, and Rosette had begun to feed a little – though she remained very restless and barely slept – I asked Framboise what she had meant.

‘They say a cat baby’s bad luck,’ said Framboise, who had come in to clean the already spotless kitchen.

I smiled. She sounded so very like Armande, my dear old friend from Lansquenet.

‘Cat baby?’ I said.

‘Hm,’ said Framboise. ‘I’ve heard of them, but never seen one. My father used to tell me the fairies would sometimes come in the night and put a cat in place of the real baby. But the Cat Baby won’t feed. The Cat Baby cries all the time. And if anyone upsets the Cat Baby, then the fairies will sort them out for sure.’

She narrowed her eyes menacingly, then, just as suddenly, smiled. ‘Of course, it’s only a story,’ she said. ‘All the same, you should see a doctor. Cat Baby doesn’t look well to me.’