But he seemed unperturbed. “No, I don’t, honey. But I hope I will, some day. A wife and a daughter and a son and a pretty house to live in. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

“And will you all live in America?”

“Perhaps.”

“I should like to live in America,” said Genevieve. “I’d live in one of those covered wagons like in the films, and my husband would be the sheriff. Are you a sheriff, Mr. Slattery?”

On her way to the lavatory, Genevieve took a sneaky peep over her shoulder at her mother and the man. They were laughing together like old friends. Lady Ticksted seemed so young and carefree. And as for Mr. Slattery—he could easily be a sheriff. Or a film star. She’d never seen a man so handsome before. And neither, she supposed, had her mother.

“You’ll think me terribly ignorant.” Her mother’s voice had risen in volume. “I can’t think when I last read a book. Magazines, yes, but books…”

Genevieve was the kind of child who makes wishes, just in case. She made them when she blew out the candles on her birthdays, when she threw coins into fountains and wells, when she lost a tooth, and at moments when she felt especially happy.

“Well, you should read this one,” said Mr. Slattery. “Even if you never read another.”

Now, wearing her perfect new shoes and watching her mother giggling with a handsome, American stranger, Genevieve decided there had never been such a glorious day as this. She closed her eyes, wriggled her toes inside the new Mary Janes and wished.

They were the last remaining customers at the café with the green walls. Anton, the waiter with the pigeon chest and the melancholy mustaches, was stacking chairs and sweeping the floor. Now and then he looked at the clock above the bar and sighed. His sighs were loud, but the couple at the table in the window either didn’t hear or didn’t care.

“So this Mr. Slattery…he was your mother’s lover?” asked Zachari.

“I don’t know.” Genevieve trailed a finger through some spilled sugar. “They might have just been friends. Perhaps she met him for the first time that day. They were attracted to each other, I’m sure of that. But as to the rest…I was only nine years old.”

“Do you suppose a beautiful woman like your mother could really have been ‘just friends’ with a man like that?”

“Well, when you put it that way…” She was keeping her gaze on the freckle. She couldn’t look him in the eye. “I hope they were lovers. I’d like to think she was happy with someone, however briefly. My mother was—is—a very unhappy woman. My father’s a terrible philanderer, you see. And a bully.