‘Stupid of me: not concentrating,’ apologized Jordan, giving his own number.

Jordan drove contentedly along the Croisette in the direction he’d earlier walked, leaving the Renault in the underground public car park adjoining the port and choosing the restaurant with a first-floor overview of the marina and its yachts, reflecting upon what it had been so easy to learn about the dismissive Mrs Appleton. She was an abstemious American woman about thirty years old who liked classic English literature, with so few friends or acquaintances she didn’t even bother with a cell phone, staying alone and without transport in one of the best hotels in the South of France, sufficiently wealthy to wear a five-carat diamond ring and be able to afford a beach-fronting suite, although unlikely to venture out too long upon it from the umbrella and sun hatted care she took to protect her complexion. And she was hopefully lonely or bored or both.

The ice maiden melted the following day, although initially only very slightly. But still enough. By the time she emerged from the elevator, just before eleven, Jordan had bought a paperback edition of Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility from the English language bookshop near the railway terminus and was back, ensconced in the lounge, the book and its title positioned on the table in front of him to be obvious to anyone entering from the lobby; Jordan himself was once more hidden behind his raised newspaper awaiting her arrival. He kept the Herald Tribune uncomfortably high, his arms beginning to ache, until the coffee service began, thankfully lowering it to order and establish that she was deeper within the room, writing at an upright table. Whatever it was appeared to be a long letter, several thick pages, not a holiday postcard.