Bel followed Fabiana and Carla inside the house, seeing how the housekeeper had a maternal arm around Carla’s shoulder, and breathed a sigh of relief. Having borne the worry of her mother’s care alone, she knew that Fabiana would now assume the responsibility. As Fabiana took Carla to her bedroom to unpack and get her settled, Bel walked across the wide-planked wooden floor of the drawing room, filled with heavy mahogany and rosewood furniture, and opened the door to her own childhood bedroom.

The sash windows were drawn up and the exterior shutters thrown open. A wonderful cool breeze blew in as she leant her elbows upon the sill and gazed at her favourite view. Below her in the paddock were Loty, her pony, and Luppa, her father’s stallion, grazing peacefully. Beyond rose a gentle hill, still dotted with old coffee bushes that had somehow managed to survive despite years of being untended. A herd of white oxen peppered the hillside, the odd barren patch revealing the deep red soil beneath the wiry grass.

She walked back through the drawing room and stood at the front door, flanked by two of the majestic, ancient palm trees from which the area took its name. Sitting down on the stone bench outside on the terrace, and smelling the sweet scent of the hibiscus that grew abundantly here, she gazed across the gardens to the freshwater lake in which she had swum every day as a child. As she listened to the steady drone of dragonflies hovering over the flower beds and watched two yellow butterflies dance playfully in front of her eyes, Bel felt some of her inner tension fall away.

Laurent would love it here, she thought to herself wistfully, and despite her determination not to think of him, tears sprang to her eyes. Even though she’d known when she took the decision to walk away from him in Paris that it signalled the end, the girlish, imaginative part of her had wondered if he’d attempt to make contact. Every morning, when she’d seen the post on its silver tray at the breakfast table, she’d imagined receiving a letter from him, begging her to return to him, telling her he couldn’t live without her.

But of course, that hadn’t happened. And as the weeks had passed, she’d begun to ponder whether his declarations of love had been as Margarida had suggested: simply part of a plan to seduce her. She wondered if Laurent ever thought of her now, or whether the short time they’d spent together had passed through his mind like flotsam and was now forgotten.

Whichever the true answer, what did it matter? She was the one who had drawn the line in the sand, chosen to return to Brazil and her forthcoming marriage. The atmosphere of La Closerie des Lilas and the sensation of Laurent’s lips on hers were now a memory, a brief dance with another world that she had chosen to end. And no amount of wishing and hoping could change the course of the life which she herself had decided on.