Laure resisted. Before her father’s death, she hadn’t the slightest notion of what ‘grief’ meant. What it entailed. How it worked. Nothing of its intimacies. Nothing of its obstinate capacity to drag a person down. She wanted, and needed, to dump that grief on her mother, to let her take responsibility for it. Her mother was wiser. ‘You’ll be amazed what going away can do,’ she said as she cradled the weeping Laure. ‘Because you’re so sad you will be receptive to the experience in a way that’s different to when you’re happy.’ She stroked Laure’s hair. ‘Think about that.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Jan.

‘To the Old Town Square.’ Laure touched his shoulder. ‘I hope we’re going the right way.’

Her mother had been right. The point about Prague was that it wasn’t home where it was permissible to collapse. Nor was Paris home, where she had first joined the Kobes family. Being in exile was a therapy.

In the Paris of her childhood visits, Laure had never felt a second’s homesickness or alienation. Nothing had changed when she walked off the ferry, caught the train, and stepped down onto a platform in the Gare du Nord, invariably littered with cigarette butts. Nowhere smelt like Paris and, inhaling it down to the bottom of her lungs, she felt the darkness of the past few months begin to shift and lighten. Three weeks later, she was on her way to Prague with the Kobes family.

It was hot here. Hotter than she was used to. The continental climate. Very hot summers, very cold winters – she exhumed a remnant from geography lessons. To her surprise, it suited Laure. She liked the radiation from iron railings, the heat spreading over her skin and the damp patch welling between her shoulder blades. She liked that the deep, sharp blue of the sky showcased a brassy sun which reminded her of the book on medieval paintings displayed in the local library by Miss Boyt, the optimist. ‘I will never give up trying to civilize you,’ she informed the sixth formers. ‘So, you might as well give in. Especially you, Laure Carlyle. What with your French mother and all that, you should be aware of these things.’

Miss Boyt’s logic escaped Laure. Nevertheless, from time to time, she rifled through the books and picked up a fact or two and she was increasingly pleased that she had.

Here she was.

If the heat suited Laure, it did not suit her charges, ten-yearold Maria and the eleven-year-old Jan. Both children were sticky, uncomfortable and making their displeasure felt. However, there was no point in returning to the Kobes’ apartment as Eva had instructed them not to return before five o’clock. A certain detachment from her children seemed to be Eva’s modus vivendi. Used to her own mother’s all-embracing parenting, Laure asked herself if this was quite normal.