An elderly waiter arrived with a tray, and Laure handed me a small goblet of cognac. Now we were sitting there, I could think of nothing to say to her.

‘It’s good we came inside when we did,’ she said, glancing towards the doorway. The rain had started up properly now, running down the pavements in woven rivers, gurgling in the gutters.

‘I think so.’

‘Is Monsieur Lefèvre at home?’

She had used the formal version of his name, even though she had known him longer than I had.

‘I have no idea.’ I took a sip of my drink. It slid down my throat like fire. And then suddenly I began to talk. Perhaps it was desperation. Perhaps it was the knowledge that a woman such as Laure had seen so many kinds of bad behaviour that she could not be shocked by anything I had to tell her. Perhaps I simply wanted to see her reaction. I was unsure whether, after all, she, too, was among those women I now had to view as a threat.

‘I found myself in an ill temper. I thought it better … to walk.’

She nodded, and allowed a small smile. Her hair, I noted, was pulled into a neat twist at her collar, more like a schoolteacher than a woman of the night. ‘I have never been married. But I can imagine that it changes one’s life beyond all recognition.’

‘It is hard to adjust. I had thought myself well suited to it. Now … I’m not sure I have the right temperament for its challenges.’ Even as I spoke I was surprised at myself. I was not the kind of woman given to confidences. The only person I had ever confided in was my sister, and in her absence, I had only really wanted to talk to Édouard.

‘You are finding Édouard … challenging?’

I saw now that she was older than I had first thought: clever application of rouge and lipstick had given her a bloom of youth. But there was something about her that made you want to keep talking; a suggestion that what you told her would go no further. I wondered absently what she had done that evening, what other secrets she heard each day.

‘Yes. No. Not Édouard exactly.’ I could not explain. ‘I don’t know. I’m – sorry. I should not have burdened you with my thoughts.’

She ordered a second cognac for me. And then she sat and sipped her own, as if considering how much to say. Finally, she leant forwards and spoke softly. ‘It will be no surprise to you, Madame, that I think myself something of an expert in the psyche of the married gentleman.’

I found myself blushing slightly.

‘I know nothing of what brought you here this evening, and I believe nobody outside can speak with any authority on what happens within the confines of a marriage. But I can tell you this: Édouard adores you. I can say so with some confidence, having seen many men, and a few, too, who were on honeymoon.’

I looked up now, and she raised a wry eyebrow. ‘Yes, on their honeymoons. Before he met you I might confidently have wagered Édouard Lefèvre would never marry. That he would have been perfectly comfortable continuing to lead the life he had. And then he met you. And with no coquettishness, or guile, you won his heart, his head, his very imagination. Do not underestimate what he feels for you, Madame.’

‘And the other women. I’m meant to ignore them?’

‘Other women?’

‘I have been told … Édouard is not the kind of man to give himself over happily to … exclusivity.’

Laure looked at me steadily. ‘And what poisonous creature told you this?’ My face must have given me away. ‘Whatever seed this counsellor has planted, Madame, it seems to have been expertly done.’

She took another sip of cognac. ‘I will tell you something, Madame, and I hope you will not take offence because it comes well meant.’ She leant forward, over the table. ‘Yes, I did not believe Édouard was the kind of man who would marry either. But when I saw you both that evening outside the Bar Tripoli, and I saw how he looked at you, his pride in you, the way he placed his hand so tenderly upon your back, the way he looks at you for approval with almost everything he says or does, I knew that you were most perfectly matched. And I saw he was happy. So happy.’

I sat very still, listening.

‘And I will admit that on our meeting I felt shame, a rare emotion for me. Because in the past months, several times when I modelled for Édouard, or even when I saw him, perhaps on his way home from some bar or restaurant, I offered myself to him for free. I have always been terribly fond of him, you see. And on every occasion since he first saw you, he declined with an unusual delicacy, but without hesitation.’

Outside, the rain had stopped abruptly. A man held his hand out of the doorway, and said something to his friend that made them both laugh.

Laure’s voice was a low murmur: ‘The greatest risk to your marriage, if I may be so frank, is not your husband. It is that the words of this so-called counsellor turn you into the very thing you – and your husband – dread.’

Laure finished her drink. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders and stood. She checked her appearance in the mirror, straightened a lock of hair, then glanced at the window. ‘Et voilà – the rain has stopped. I think today might be a fine one. Go home to your husband, Madame. Rejoice in your good fortune. Be the woman he adores.’

She gave me a brief smile. ‘And in future choose your counsellors most carefully.’

With a word to the proprietor, she made her way out of the bar into the damp blue light of the early dawn. I sat there, digesting what she had told me, feeling exhaustion finally seep into my bones, along with something else: a deep, deep relief.

I called the elderly waiter over to pay the bill. He informed me with a shrug that Madame Laure had already settled it, and went back to polishing his glasses.

The apartment was so quiet when I made my way up the stairs that I guessed Édouard must be asleep. He was a constant source of noise when at home, singing or whistling or playing his gramophone so loudly that the neighbours would thump on the walls in irritation. The sparrows chattered in the ivy that covered our walls, and the distant sound of horses’ hoofs on the cobbles spoke of a slowly waking city, but the little apartment at the top of 21a rue Soufflot was utterly silent.

I tried not to think about where he might have been, or in what frame of mind. I took off my shoes and hurried up the last of the stairs, my feet muffled on the wooden steps, wanting already to climb into bed beside him and wrap myself around him. I would tell him how sorry I was, how I adored him, how I had been a fool. I would be the woman he had married.