There seemed to be no sense of one course being distinct from another. Flat grey platters appeared, heaped with broad beans in oil, mashed turnip, whole chickens, mutton and salted pork. On the opposite side of the room, a waiter carried high on his shoulders a wooden board bearing six trout, their silver scales glistening.

Fabrissa explained each new dish for me, local specialities, recipes I’d never encountered before. One was a peculiar compote of what she told me were medlars, an ugly fruit that had to be harvested and then ripened off the tree. It had the texture, the stickiness of honey. Another common winter dessert, she explained, was made from the flower-buds of cardoons. Blanched and then wrapped in cloth, they were buried in the ground before being dug up and mixed with honey to make a smooth paste.

Other than food, I can remember little of what we talked about in that early part of the evening. Everything is hazy, filtered through the warm fug of wine and conversation. Inconsequential, but such agreeable conversation to me. I cannot even remember if she spoke to me in French, or I to her in English, or moitié-moitié, a duet in two languages. But, even five years later, I can still taste the tang of the salt pork on my tongue, still savour the rough, woody texture of the broad beans, slippery in oil, still feel the gritty texture of the bread, like crumbled cake, between my fingers.

And still I hear the song in my mind, though I never caught sight of the troubadour. His voice floated through the hall, up into the rafters, into every stone corner and dusty cobweb. I remember marvelling that he could sing for so long, with a tone so even and unbroken, and I believe I said so. I think I might even have tried to tell her of the musical aspirations I’d once had before the War intervened and Father decided it was not a suitable career for his son. But I drew back from such confidences. I wished neither to burden her, nor to reveal myself as a man disappointed in life. Instead, I asked her to tell me the story of the ballad, and when she had, in return I explained the accompaniment, how one note worked upon the other to provide its own harmonies.

So time passed and yet did not move at all. And, for me, enchanted as I was, the world had shrunk to her slim white hands, the promise of her tumbling black hair, her grey eyes and her clear, sweet voice.

‘Are you an honest man?’ she said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

I started, taken by surprise both by the question and the grave tone in which she asked it. It was so different from the lightness of our conversations before that I hardly knew what to make of it.

But I answered. Of course I answered.

‘I would say so,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

Fabrissa then tilted her head to one side in that distinctive way of hers and looked at me.

‘And a man who can tell true from false?’

I paused as I considered how to answer. Ten years of voices in my head, of memories that were more real, more vivid, than the world outside my window. Ten years of living with George at my side. All this would suggest I was very far adrift from reality, that I was incapable of distinguishing true from false. But at that moment, sitting with Fabrissa in the warm companionship of the Ostal, the answer was obvious.

‘Yes. When it matters, then, yes. I am.’

She smiled, a broad and hopeful smile. And I, poor slave, felt a thousand emotions explode inside my head. I was lost. Bewilderingly, heart and soul, lost. Still she stared at me, as if seeking the answer to some question she had yet to ask.

‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘I can see it.’

A whistle slipped silently from between my lips. I felt as though I had passed some kind of test. A modern Gawain setting out from the Round Table, the conditions of his quest met. I was aware of her gaze upon me, weighing up the man I was. I could see she was considering and reflecting, I could see the movement in her eyes. But on the outside she was still, so very still. I tried to be the same, though nerves were sloshing in my stomach like bilge water in a scuppered rowing boat.

The moment stretched between us. The shapes and sounds and smells of the room, all the guests in it, faded away. Then Fabrissa shifted position on the bench and the enchantment was broken.

‘Tell me about him,’ she said.

The ground fell from under me, like a trapdoor beneath the hangman’s noose. A sudden, sharp drop, then the jerk of the rope.

How did she know? I had said nothing. Hinted at nothing. I did not want to talk about George, not even to Fabrissa. Especially not to Fabrissa. I did not want her to see me as the wretch I believed myself to be, but rather the man I had been for the past hours in her company.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, more sharply than I intended.

She smiled. ‘Tell me about George.’

Still I pretended not to understand.

‘Freddie?’ she said quietly. Her hand slid across the rough white cloth, a little closer to mine. Her fingernails were the colour of pearl.

I took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I…’

How to explain? I stumbled for an excuse.

‘It’s all been said.’

‘Maybe only the wrong things have been said.’

Her hand was so close to mine now that we were almost touching. I noticed how the gold ring she wore on her right thumb was too big for her. It rested on the knuckle, as though surprised to find itself there.

‘Talking doesn’t help.’

The space between her skin and mine crackled. I dared not move. Dared not let the tips of my fingers stray towards hers.

‘Talking did not help,’ I repeated, the words dry in my throat. I glanced at her. She was still smiling, not with pity, but with compassion, curiosity. I felt something crack inside me.

‘And could it be you talked only because others required it of you? Maybe? But it is different here. Things are different. Try.’

‘I did try,’ I snapped back, appalled at how immediately the sense of being unfairly judged returned. Mother had accused me of not wanting to get well, Father too. I could not bear it if Fabrissa thought the same. ‘No one believed me, but I did try.’

Whether by design or accident, her hand brushed against mine as she withdrew it from the table and placed it in her lap. So intense, so profound was the sensation, I felt as if I had been burnt.

‘I-’

‘Try again, Freddie,’ she said.

And in those three quiet words, three simple words, somehow there was a promise of an entire life to be lived if I could only take the chance.

I can still recall the sense of possibility that came over me then, a kind of lightness. Every sinew, every muscle, every vein in my body seemed suddenly to vibrate, to be alive. If I could find the courage to speak, she would listen. Fabrissa would listen.

I took a deep breath and then slowly, steadily, exhaled. Finally, I began to talk.