“I went and put my mouth before my brain,” said Lulu. “The way we both do sometimes. Because we are hurting in our hearts. We have terrible tempers, the pair of us. We go off like fireworks and say things we regret.” She reached out to stroke Genevieve’s face again. “Vivi, I am truly, deeply sorry.”

Camby and Violetta had gone off together and Genevieve had let her down unforgivably. Lulu was drinking to forget her woes, but with every drink, they grew. At least she didn’t have to drink alone. Olga, as it turned out, was surprisingly sympathetic, as well as being morbidly fascinating. She was talking about how she’d first fallen in love with Paolo Zachari.

“He was so full of ideas,” she was saying. “So beautiful and clever. There was an energy about him—a magnetism. And there I was—an empty husk in comparison. I’d used up all my youth and my strength on just surviving.”

“I certainly know how that feels,” muttered Lulu.

“In the beginning I envied him,” said Olga. “I wanted his energy for myself. If I could have extracted it, somehow—if I could have bottled it and drank it, I would have done. And then it changed and evolved. It wasn’t just the energy I wanted anymore. It was him. I wanted to possess him. All of him. And I started to see that he needed something from me too.”

“What was it?” Lulu asked. “What did he need from you?”

“It was very simple. He was alone in Paris, and afraid. He needed to belong somewhere. He needed to be cared for. I built him up and made him strong. I made him into the person he is today. My love for him.” She stared down into her drink. “He thinks he doesn’t need me anymore. But he’s wrong. One day soon he will understand that.”

Then she started talking about her children. Lulu wasn’t sure how many there were. She became confused as the story progressed. By the end of the tale she was imagining a whole sea of hungry little faces, with Olga dropping crumbs in their mouths like a big mother-bird. When the barman brought more drinks over, Olga started coughing hard into a handkerchief. She was trying to hide the blood, but Lulu had seen it.

“Does Zachari know how ill you are?”

“Not really. Not the full extent of it.”

“Don’t you think you should tell him?”

Olga buried the handkerchief away. “What for?”

Lulu toyed with her glass, looked sidelong at her. “My friend Genevieve—she’s in love with him. Did you know that?”

Olga laughed. At least, the sound resembled a laugh, but the expression on the face was far from happy. “There are always women like her around Paolo. They come and they go.”

“What do you mean—‘women like her’?”

“Rich women.” Olga spoke the word “rich” as if it was the worst kind of insult. “Women who buy his shoes. They think they can buy Paolo too. But in the end I am the one who stays. He tires of them. He always does.”