That at least was true enough. But I’ve never been easy with doctors and priests, and I hesitated to follow the old lady’s advice. Three more days elapsed, with Rosette mewing and gasping throughout, and eventually I overcame my reluctance and called to see the doctor in nearby Angers.

The doctor examined Rosette with care. She needed tests, he said at last. But that cry confirmed it in his mind. It was a genetic condition, he said, most commonly known as cri-du-chat, thus named for that eerie, mewing cry. Not fatal, but incurable; and with symptoms that, at this early stage, the doctor was hesitant to predict.

‘So she is a Cat Baby,’ said Anouk.

It seemed to delight her that Rosette was different. She’d been an only child for so long; and now, at seven, she seemed at times weirdly adult. Caring for Rosette, coaxing her to feed from a bottle; singing to her; rocking her in the chair Paul had brought from their old farmhouse.

‘Cat Baby,’ she crooned, rocking the chair. ‘Rock-a-Cat Baby, on the treetop.’ And Rosette did seem to respond to her. The crying stopped – at least, some of the time. She gained weight. She slept up to three or four hours at night. Anouk said it was the air of Les Laveuses, and put down saucers of milk and sugar for the fairies, in case they called by to see how the Cat Baby was doing.

I had not returned to the doctor in Angers. Further tests would not improve Rosette. Instead we watched her, Anouk and I; we bathed her in herbs; we sang to her; we massaged her thin little pipe-stick limbs with lavender and tiger balm and fed her milk from an eye-dropper (she would not take the bottle teat).

A fairy baby, Anouk said. She certainly was a pretty one; so delicate with her small shapely head and her wide-spaced eyes and pointed chin.

‘She even looks like a cat,’ said Anouk. ‘Pantoufle says so. Don’t you, Pantoufle?’

Ah, yes. Pantoufle. At first I’d thought maybe Pantoufle would disappear, once Anouk had a baby sister to care for. The wind was still blowing across the Loire, and Yule, like Midsummer, is a time of change; an uncomfortable time for travellers.

But with the arrival of Rosette, Pantoufle seemed, if anything, to get stronger. I found I now saw him with increasing clarity; sitting beside the baby’s crib; watching her with button-black eyes as Anouk rocked her and talked to her and sang songs to quiet her.

V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent

‘Poor Rosette doesn’t have an animal,’ said Anouk as we sat together by the fire. ‘Maybe that’s why she cries all the time. Maybe we should ask one to come. To look after her, the way Pantoufle looks after me.’