Though she hadn’t needed a reminder of how quickly time was passing, she was given one as the train rattled along the shore of Lake Geneva. It was nearly four months since she’d last taken this journey and she was struck by how different the landscape looked now. The mountains were no longer dip-dyed in white – only slivers of snow remained on their summits, topping green and brown and black. The sky was a hazy blue, and the train rushed past sailboats and rowers, their blades slicing through the calm surface like knives through warm butter.

At Lausanne station she boarded a bus up the hill to St François, the cobbled square with the church and the cafe where she’d had a coffee and a croissant before leaving last time. As she stepped off into the square, her brain skidded momentarily into déjà vu, except it felt more like a snippet of another time, another life – a future life, perhaps. The sensation of having lived here, of sitting in that cafe every day, of knowing this town like it were her own. She stood still for a minute trying to hang onto the feeling, but it slipped away as quickly as it had arrived.

She remembered the way to Rue Haldimand. Down the steep cobbled street with its intricate wrought-iron signs, across Rue Centrale and up into Place de la Palud, where the mechanical clock whirred into life every hour. Past the fountain and right into Rue Haldimand, number eight on the left.

She pressed the intercom and waited.

‘Oui?’

‘Evelyne, it’s Sylvia.’

‘Oh mon Dieu!’

She pressed herself on the door when it buzzed open and made her way up the four flights of stairs, feeling considerably more breathless than she had the last time she was here. The door to flat four was ajar and she knocked and pushed it open. ‘Allô?’

The door opened wide and Evelyne stood in front of her in shorts and a loose white blouse, a pink patterned scarf barely keeping her hair in check. As Sylvia kissed her and was welcomed in, she saw Evelyne wasn’t alone. Behind her, standing on the tatty old rug in the centre of the room was another girl, a very young-looking girl, with straight brown hair that fell below her shoulders, arms like matchsticks and a vulnerability that made Sylvia want to reach out and pull her into a protective hug.

‘Sylvia, this is Anna,’ Evelyne said. ‘We’re going to have a full house.’

JULY 2016 Lausanne/Montreux, Switzerland

JESS