What I was actually wearing that day, of course, was that disastrous cream felt cloche that I’d bought from Hannaux. I say cloche—it wasn’t at all like Maman’s cloche, which was a good ten years old and came down over her eyebrows giving her the air of a retiring tortoise. Mine was worn back off the face so the brim framed the hairline. I had thought this style was made for women with high saintly foreheads, but when I put it on I realized it was the hat that made the wearer’s forehead high and saintly. My eyes seemed farther apart too. In fact my whole face appeared flatter, more placid, more readable. When I was trying not to laugh my lips tended to go in at the corners, in and up, in a way that Célia called impish sometimes or cheeky or even flirtatious. Not in this hat. My lips were virtuous.

I’d bought it at the end of the day, I remember. You should never do this in a department store. The assistant is bound to be tired and, at Hannaux, will start murmuring under her breath in Greek.

It definitely wasn’t me.

—

I wasn’t sure if I was going to say anything about Sébastien at all. But look what happened. He sneaked in on the tail end of the previous chapter, which was meant to be about James and only James. Strolling into the scene with a cigarette in his hand as if he had every right to be there. Nobody approved of Sébastien, for all sorts of reasons. I didn’t approve of him myself, precisely because of the way he insinuated himself into my life.

He did it completely openly. That was what was so underhanded. “Come for a spin,” he said, a couple of weeks after the wedding, like the family friend he was, and so I did. He turned up every month or so in the Bedford and I jumped on board and we took supplies out to the army and air force bases. There was no funny business. He was careful that I stayed in the lorry when we reached the camps, so as to prevent fifty lonely servicemen ogling my backside. The only time he touched me was when he took my hand as I jumped out of the cab at the end of the trip.