After a while Pistache spoke.

“What did they mean about a legacy?”

I shrugged. “Nothing. Cassis made out he was a rich man so that they’d look after him in his old age. They should have known better. That’s all.”

I hoped she might leave it at that, but there was a stubborn line between her eyes that promised trouble.

“I never even knew I had an uncle,” she said tonelessly.

“We weren’t close.”

Silence. I could see her going over it in her mind and I wished I could stop the circle of her thoughts, but knew I couldn’t.

“Yannick’s very like him,” I told her, trying for lightness. “Handsome and feckless. And his wife leads him like a dancing bear.”

I demonstrated mincingly, hoping for a smile, but if anything her thoughtful look deepened.

“They seemed to think you’d cheated him somehow,” she said. “Bought him out, when he was ill.”

I forced myself to pause. Anger at this stage would not help anyone.

“Pistache,” I said patiently. “Don’t believe everything those two tell you. Cassis wasn’t ill, at least, not in the way you think. He drank himself into bankruptcy, left his wife and son, sold off the farm to pay his debts…”

She watched me curiously, and I had to make an effort to keep my voice from rising.

“Look, that was all a long time ago. It’s over. My brother’s dead.”

“Laure said there was a sister.”

I nodded. “Reine-Claude.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I shrugged.

“We weren’t – ”

“Close. I gathered.”

Her voice was small and flat-sounding.

Fear pricked at me again, and I said more sharply than I had intended:

“So? You understand that, don’t you? After all, you and Noisette were never – ”

I bit the words short, but too late. I saw her flinch and cursed myself inwardly.

“No. But at least I tried. For you.”

Damn. I’d forgotten how sensitive she was. All those years I took her for the quiet one, watching my other daughter grow wilder and more willful day by day… Yes, Noisette was always my favorite. But until now I thought I’d hidden it better. If she had been Prune I would have put my arms around her, but to see her now, this calm, close-faced woman with her small, hurt smile and sleepy cat’s eyes… I thought of Noisette, and how, out of pride and stubbornness, I had made her a stranger to me. I tried to explain.

“We were separated a long time ago,” I told her. “After… the war. My mother was… ill… and we went to live with different relatives. We didn’t keep in touch.” It was almost true, at least as close as I could bear to tell her. “Reine went to… work… in Paris. She… fell ill too. She’s in a private hospital near Paris. I visited her once, but…”

How could I explain? The institution-stink of the place, boiled cabbage and laundry and sickness, televisions blaring in soft rooms full of lost people who wept when they didn’t like the stewed apples and who sometimes shouted at one another with unexpected viciousness, flailing their fists helplessly and pushing each other against the pale green walls. There had been a man in a wheelchair-a relatively young man with a face like a scarred fist and rolling, hopeless eyes-who had screamed I don’t like it here! I don’t like it here! during the whole of my visit, until his voice faded into a drone and even I found myself ignoring his distress. One woman stood in a corner with her face to the wall and wept, unheeded. And the woman on the bed-the huge bloated thing with the dyed hair, round white thighs and arms cool and soft as fresh dough, smiling serenely to herself and murmuring… Only the voice was the same, without which I would never have believed it, a little-girl’s voice chiming nonsense syllables, the eyes as blank and round as an owl’s. I made myself touch her.