V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent,

V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’attend.’

And now she opened her mouth and wailed, a great, torn hopeful cry that cut through the air like beating wings. ‘That was it. Oh, that was—’ Her voice wavered helplessly and she fell towards me, arms open like a drowning child.

I caught her – she would have fallen otherwise – and the scent of her was like old violets and clothes kept too long unworn, like mothballs and toothpaste and powder and dust; so absurdly unlike the familiar sandalwood scent of my mother that it was all I could do to hold back the tears—

‘’Viane,’ she said. ‘My ’Viane.’

And I held her, just as I’d held my mother in the days and weeks before her death, with quiet words of reassurance that she did not hear, but that calmed her a little, and finally she began to sob, with the long exhausted sobs of someone who has seen more than their eyes can bear, felt more than their heart can withstand—

Patiently I let them subside. A minute later those tearing sounds in her chest had settled into a series of low tremors, and her face, ravaged now by the flow of tears, turned to look at the circle of guests. For a long time, no one moved. Some things are just too much to take; and this woman in her naked grief made them shy away like children from some fierce animal dying in the road.

No one offered a handkerchief.

No one looked her in the eye.

No one spoke.

Then, and to my astonishment, Madame Luzeron got to her feet and spoke up in her cut-glass voice. ‘My poor dear. I know how you feel.’

‘You do?’ Madame’s eyes were a mosaic of tears.

‘Well, I lost my son, you know.’ She put her hand on Madame’s shoulder and guided her to an armchair nearby. ‘You’ve had a shock. Have some champagne. My late husband always used to say that champagne was largely medicinal.’

Madame gave a wavering smile. ‘You’re very kind, Madame—’

‘Héloïse. And you?’

‘Michèle.’

So that was my mother’s name. Michèle.

At least I can still be ’Viane, I thought, and now I began to shake so violently that I almost collapsed into my chair.

‘You OK?’ said Nico, concerned.

I nodded, trying to smile.

‘You look like you could do with something medicinal yourself,’ he said, handing me a glass of cognac. He looked so earnest – and so incongruous – in his Henri IV wig and frogged silk coat that I started to cry – absurd, I know – and for a time I quite forgot the little scene that Michèle’s story had interrupted.