It was four months—four months that were fun and frustrating in equal measure—before Genevieve met Lulu of Montparnasse in the bar of the Ritz. Lulu took an instant liking to her and began straightaway to introduce Genevieve around and bring Paris alive for her. Now Genevieve knew everybody and went everywhere, thanks not to Robert, her bright white hope of a husband, but to Lulu. There was nowhere else she wanted to be; no city in the world that was the equal of this one. And yet she was still, to an extent, pressing her face up to the glass. She was not one of them.

In order to gain acceptance from the writers she admired so much, in order to be allowed into their discussions, their talk of meaningful things, clever things, beautiful things—in order to be really listened to by Betterson, Pound, Ford and the rest—she must write a poem that was truly brilliant. A poem that would show them she was not just another rich woman with ridiculous aspirations, to be humored and flattered for her patronage, not just Lulu’s pretty, English sidekick but a real poet in her own right.

Today’s poem would be the one. The written evidence of her talent, her genius.

Wouldn’t it?

As Genevieve read through her masterpiece, the excitement in her eyes began to dull. The poem was losing its form before it had even found it. By the sixth line, it was more a series of rambling, disjointed thoughts than a poem. By the tenth line it had become a whine. At the thirteenth line she gave up reading altogether, struck a line through it and started doodling in the margin. She drew a comical little sketch of Joseph Lazarus, Lulu’s admirer. Lazarus the penguin, holding a fish in his long beak, with a confused expression, as though he couldn’t work out what it was doing there.

“When did you say the horse is coming back?” Robert had appeared in the doorway.

“I’m not exactly sure.”

“They must have given you some idea, Vivi.” He was straightening his tie with the use of the hall mirror. She knew this without looking up. It was what he always did on his way out to work.

“I think the man said three weeks. Or was it four?”

“Four weeks! Four whole weeks just to clean a statue?”

“Three, more likely.” She drew Lazarus’s wings and dipped her pen in the ink again, her head bowed a little so that Robert couldn’t see her face.

“That really is an awfully long time.” He was brushing crumbs off his sleeves. “I fail to see why the thing needed cleaning in the first place. Looked just fine to me.”

“Oh, it was very smeary.”

“So what was wrong with getting Céline to give it a wipe?”