It could be argued that all perfume is born out of shame; a self-consciousness of our natural odour.

He didn’t know what it was like to live between memory and regret with nothing to numb it.

Her eyes were as wide as a nun’s in a brothel.

But where Ma saw only old books gathering dust and smelling of mildew, I found comfort and possibility. Other worlds were within my grasp – better worlds full of rewarded ambition, refinement, and eloquence. I clung to them as a pilgrim whose faith is proportional to the extremity of their need clings to a relic or a prayer.

Likewise, while the men and women were no more naturally attractive than their English counterparts, they dressed with an assurance and attention to detail that would have been considered the height of arrogance in England. Here, maintaining a certain chic was apparently nothing less than a civic duty.

An uninterrupted view of the Paris skyline was spread out before her, like a giant landscape painting rendered in shades of blue-grey, charcoal and purple-tinted umber; the dreamy palette of shifting shadows at twilight. The blue hour.

I’d like to live in great comfort. And peace.’ And then she added, quite to her surprise, ‘With no one to tell me what to do or how to do it.

Climbing the steps to the hotel, Grace paused, taking a long look at Paris, in all its shimmering, enigmatic elegance, wearing the nigh as a beautiful woman wears diamonds.

When you are older and have swum out into the stream of life, you’ll see – there are no ‘good’ people, little girl. We’re all trying and failing, trying too hard and failing too often. Remember that. We shouldn’t judge too harshly, in the end, the sins of others.

Aging does that; it makes you amenable to far more ambiguous feelings and opinions than the inflexible black-and-white thinking of youth.