With each passing day, Bel’s frustration escalated to greater heights. Given that Laurent had ceased to flirt with her completely, she had nowhere to go. And besides, she asked herself over and over again, where did she want to go?

But no matter how often she posed this question to herself, and her head told her that the sooner she was on the boat back to Brazil the better, it made no difference. As she sat for hours in his presence, the fact he was so near yet so far was a delicious torture to her soul.

One evening, as she said a chaste goodnight to Laurent and paused in the garden to compose herself before climbing into the waiting car and making the journey home, she noticed a bundle of rags lying under the cypress hedge. She was sure that it had not been there when she’d taken a walk outside during an earlier break. Moving tentatively forwards, she put a foot out towards it and poked it with the toe of her shoe. The bundle of rags moved and Bel jumped back in fright.

Warily maintaining her distance, she watched as a small, filthy human foot emerged from the edge of the rags, and then, from the other end of the bundle, a head of dirt-matted hair. As the figure began to reveal itself, Bel saw it was a young boy of perhaps seven or eight years of age. A pair of eyes, which Bel saw were dazed with exhaustion, opened for a few seconds. Then they closed again and she realised the child had fallen back to sleep.

‘Meu Deus,’ she whispered to herself, moved to tears by the sight of him. Debating what to do, she walked tentatively towards the boy and quietly knelt down next to him, not wishing to startle him. Her fingers reached out towards him, but this time, her touch woke the boy and he sat up in alarm, immediately on full alert.

‘Please, have no fear, I will not hurt you. Tu parles français?’

The boy, his grimy face a picture of terror, put his emaciated arms up protectively in front of himself and backed away from her under the hedge.

‘Where are you from?’ she tried again, this time in English. Again, he merely stared at her in fear, like a trapped animal, as she noticed the deep gash on his shin, caked with dried blood. As the boy cowered in front of her, his huge frightened eyes bringing further tears to her own, she slowly reached out a hand and placed it gently on his cheek. She smiled at him, knowing she mustn’t frighten him, but instead try to gain his trust. As her fingers gently cupped the side of his face, she felt the boy relax.

‘What has happened to you?’ she murmured, studying his eyes. ‘Whatever you have seen, you are too young to know such pain.’

Suddenly the boy’s head fell heavily against her palm, but jerked upwards in alarm a few seconds later. Eventually, when he realised that her comforting caress had not been withdrawn, he returned to sleep.