After closing time, Laure made her rounds, satisfying herself that the lights were out and the alarms set.

She was on the bottom rung of the stairs and overheard Nic and May talking in the lobby.

‘Can I ask you out to dinner?’ May asked. She was teasing and laughing.

‘Yes, you can but whether you may is another matter,’ said Nic.

Laure found herself frozen to the stair. That exchange was an echo – eerie and dislocating – one from long ago.

‘OK. May I take you out to dinner? In fact, I insist.’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’ Nic’s footsteps sounded on the wooden floor. ‘Are you always so bossy? You know what they say about domineering women?’

May laughed, a sound filled with excitement and anticipation. ‘The same as they say about domineering men.’

‘Let’s go and discuss it.’

The door opened.

Laure waited until she heard the door shut behind them. The madness and ache of that time, her time, were old companions and they were with her now.

Outside the museum, Laure gave herself a pause. A street-cleaning vehicle was grinding up the street. Two cyclists with sit-up-and-beg vehicles lumbered past. Madame Becque waved from the grocery.

Irritatingly, her sixth sense swung into play. Was she being followed?

Occasionally, this happened. It was a conditioned reflex from the past, a fallout, usually re-triggered by sleeplessness and emotion.

Every sense on high alert, she picked her way down the street towards the triangle of earth where she had first seen Kočka and rattled a packet of cat biscuits. She did not hold out much hope and there was no rustle of undergrowth, no answering sound and no glimpse of an emaciated brindled body.

She thought of the weary golden eyes, the tiny puft of the feline heartbeat under her fingers, the bony, fragile skull. If life had been kind and equable, Kočka would be slinking through the violet night, in a garden where poppies burned in the sun, roses rustled and ripening fruit scented the evening air. She would be lying on warmed stone, replete and dreaming.

The phone in her bag rang. Reluctantly, she fished it out. ‘Hallo.’

‘Laure, it’s May. I wanted to ask you a couple more things.’ ‘Can’t they wait? Anyway, thought you were with Nic.’

May was the dog with the bone. ‘I am, but I’ll be working on the article before I go to bed. It would help me a lot if we had a discussion. I know … I know the copybook is still blotted but I hope we are past it?’ She was warm. She was cajoling. She was contrite. ‘Can we get over it?’

The words clustered in Laure’s ear. Animals could shake water off their coats and she longed to shake off May in similar fashion.

‘You’re right to bear a grudge,’ persisted May.