‘I think I could live here.’ Madeline pushed back her book and rested her chin on her hands. ‘Clean air, birds singing, lots of flowers, no litter. Do you like it?’

‘There’s no-one to play with. We’re stuck here without a car. There’s nowhere to go. You’re always reading.’ Ryan stirred the long spoon about in his ice cream. His complaints had become a refrain the past few days. During the winter season, the trains only called at the little station once an hour, turning every outing into a day trip, and day trips became expensive.

‘You would like to go somewhere?’

She looked up and saw the young man who had rescued her handbag at the parade. He was wearing the same clothes, even down to the leather satchel at his side.

‘There is a very beautiful building on Cap Ferrat, the Villa Rothschild. It has many gardens and a waterfall, and is open to the public. I have a car.’ He pointed back at the blue open-topped Peugeot. ‘We could drive there.’

She saw the boy’s face brighten and realised how much he still missed his father. Ryan had seen a lot more of his good side, and was young enough to be able to forget the bad. Jack Gilby had portrayed himself as a hero to the boy, turning her into a villain in the process.

‘Can we go, Madeline?’ Ryan was already pushing his ice cream aside and rising from the table.

She regarded the young man with a cool eye, but he did not move beneath her critical gaze. ‘That’s a pretty underhand trick, Mr Bellocq,’ she told him as Ryan began tugging at her hand.

‘Please, call me Johann.’ He gave a tentative smile, anxious to be accepted.

As they drove, he thought back to the first time he had seen her, standing on the empty railway platform with a map and a backpack, the boy’s hand held tightly in hers. Her floral dress was English and cheap, her trainers disproportionately large for her thin bare legs. After he had spoken to her, he’d realised that she was everything he had ever wanted in a woman. Down here, away from the mountain villages, there were only blank-eyed American tourists and pompous English couples in ridiculous straw hats. The permanent residents were elderly and sour, too rich to concern themselves with being pleasant. This one—the boy called her Madeline—was different. There was an innocence, a vulnerability about her. She had been hurt by a man and left without money or confidence. She would not sneer at him as others had done. The boy was the key—he needed male companionship; otherwise, he would get on her nerves and drive her away from the village.