‘Yes, I like him,’ I confessed.

‘So, what will you do from here, Maia? Will you return to Geneva, or stay in Rio with your young man?’

‘As a matter of fact, he flew to Paris yesterday morning,’ I explained.

‘Ah, Paris!’ Beatriz clasped her hands together. ‘One of the happiest times of my life. And, as you already know, your great-grandmother visited when she was younger. I believe you’ve seen the sculpture of her in the garden that my father had shipped over from Paris as her wedding gift?’

‘Yes, I did notice it,’ I confirmed lightly, wondering where this conversation would lead.

‘When I was in Paris and studying at the Beaux-Arts school, the sculptor responsible for it was one of my professors. So I introduced myself to him one day after class and told him I was Izabela’s daughter. To my surprise, Professor Brouilly said he recalled her most clearly. And when I told him of her death, he seemed genuinely grief-stricken. After that, he seemed to take me under his wing, or at least developed a special interest in me, inviting me to his beautiful house in Montparnasse and taking me for lunch at La Closerie des Lilas. He said it was where he’d once spent a splendid lunch with my mother. He even took me to the atelier of Professor Paul Landowski and introduced me to the great man himself. By then, of course, Landowski was old and rarely sculpting, but he showed me photographs of the time when the moulds for the Cristo were prepared in his atelier. Apparently, my mother was there too while Landowski and Professor Brouilly were working on it. He also found a mould from his store cupboard that he said he’d taken of my mother’s hands as a possible prototype for the Cristo’s.’ Beatriz smiled in fond remembrance. ‘Professor Brouilly was so generous to me with both his time and affection. And for years afterwards, we corresponded, right up until his death in 1965. The kindness of strangers,’ Beatriz mused. ‘So, Maia, my dear, are you to follow in your great-grandmother’s and grandmother’s footsteps and make the journey from Rio to Paris? It is certainly easier to get there than it used to be. It took me and my mother almost six weeks to get there. By this time tomorrow you could be sitting in La Closerie des Lilas sipping absinthe! Maia, dear? Did you hear me?’

After what Beatriz had just related to me, I was too choked to speak. No wonder Yara had been so wary of telling me the story of my past. It was clear that this woman knew nothing of the father who had originally given her life.

‘Yes. Perhaps I will go to Paris,’ I agreed, trying to recover my equilibrium.

‘Good.’ Beatriz seemed satisfied with my answer. ‘And now, Maia, I’m afraid we must move to more serious matters. This afternoon, I have a notário coming to see me. I am intending to rewrite my will and leave most of what I have to you, my granddaughter. It isn’t a lot, sadly, just a house that is falling down and needs many hundreds of thousands of reais to renovate it. Money which you don’t have, I’m sure. So perhaps you may want to sell it and I wish you to know that I don’t mind in the least if you do. But I do have one condition, and that is that you allow Yara to live in it until her death. I know how frightened she is about the future, and I want to reassure her that she will be taken care of. And the Casa is as much her home as it has been mine. She will be left a bequest, a sum of money that should see her through the rest of her life. But if it does not, and she lives longer, I trust that you will take care of her. She is my closest friend, you see. We grew up as sisters.’