But Alice had left discretion behind as they had left England. Her first sight of a foreign country seemed to have turned her head. She had insisted on staying on deck on the cross-Channel ferry in spite of the stiff March breeze and had launched into a conversation not only with fellow passengers but even with several of the deckhands. Instead of writing up her diary on the train to Paris she had stared about her asking a thousand questions which had brought Maud’s crochet work almost to a standstill. And now they were in Paris and the mere name appeared to work some magic on Alice Conyers. Maud was glad their itinerary had allowed for no more than three days in the capital of frivolity. Alice had spent precious time patronizing the boutiques of the Rue de la Paix when she could have been visiting the Louvre. Here she was, luggage stuffed with who knew what frou-frous, bright-eyed, alert and smiling at the world. Overexcited.

And things were getting worse. They were seated in the elaborately decorated refreshment room of the Gare de Lyon waiting for the Blue Train to be announced. Alice had sighed with pleasure and repeated the names of the towns through which it travelled on its way from Paris to the Riviera and beyond to Italy when the announcer gave them out: Lyons, Avignon, Marseilles, Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo. She leaned forward to eye the waiters in long aprons down to their ankles as they whisked about deftly delivering plates of highly seasoned and decidedly foreign-looking food to the travellers. And now her attention was entirely caught by this Frenchwoman who had settled down opposite them, sipping her dangerously sophisticated pink drink.

No better than she should be, decided Maud. Travelling alone, what’s more, and that tells you something! Typical of a certain type of Frenchwoman and a totally unsuitable acquaintance for Alice. She was wearing a wedding ring on a slim white hand but that cut no ice with Maud. Her clothes were in the height of fashion and at a guess, that dark red travelling coat with its glossy black fur trimmings and matching toque were from the House of Monsieur Worth. Well, some French had profited from the war, apparently. Perhaps her husband – or protector – was in armaments, Maud thought suspiciously and wished she could convey these thoughts to Alice but the woman spoke good English and was certain to understand. The Frenchwoman extended slender silk-clad calves and neat buttoned ankle boots. Alice tucked her own legs under the table, conscious suddenly of her lisle stockings and lace-up shoes. She turned a defiant face to Maud.

‘I’m having a Campari-soda, Miss Benson. Would you like one?’

‘No, I would not,’

Maud didn’t like to see the look of sly complicity which this provoked between Alice and the Frenchwoman.

‘Pardon me,’ she said. ‘I am Isabelle de Neuville and I’m travelling to the Côte d’Azur. And you?’

‘I’m going to the south of France too but only as far as Marseilles. I’m picking up a P&O steamer from Marseilles to Bombay. I’m Alice Conyers and this is my companion, Miss Benson.’

Madame de Neuville acknowledged Maud with an unnecessarily friendly bow and then pointed upwards to the ceiling to one of the many florid Belle Epoque landscapes with which it was decorated. Maud had, on entering, advised Alice not to look. ‘Voilà,’ she said. ‘That’s where you’re going. The painted lady represents Marseilles. The street you see is the Canebière where all the low life and quite a lot of the high life of Marseilles is to be found. That is where your boat will leave from.’

Alice followed her pointing finger, enchanted but a little scandalized by the series of opulent and semi-clad ladies who personified the cities along the route of the Blue Train. They smiled enticingly down at the travellers below, their allure only a little dimmed by almost twenty years of cigar smoke.

‘And which one represents your destination?’ Alice enquired.

‘That one. Nice. And the street in the picture is the Promenade des Anglais.’

‘It looks lovely! So full of sunshine and flowers! So southern!’

‘Yes, indeed. The mimosa will be over now and the magnolia and orange blossom will be out…’

Maud decided that this exchange should be nipped in the bud. ‘I observe,’ she said frostily, ‘that you are travelling without your maid?’

‘Ah, no,’ was the reply. ‘My maid is handling the luggage. I hope successfully. But since the war, reliable domestic staff are hard to come by. Do you not find that?’

‘Oh, I do!’ said Alice. ‘And I had noticed that all the waiters are under sixteen or over sixty!’

‘Sadly it is the same all over France and not only waiters – policemen, porters, shop assistants, engine drivers…’

Two things occurred at this moment to bring this rather limping conversation to a close. On the one hand, Alice’s Campari-soda appeared and, on the other hand, Thomas Cook’s agent appeared at Maud Benson’s side.

‘You have plenty of time for the moment, madam,’ he said, bowing politely to Maud, ‘but you should take your seats. If you would accompany me?’

With relief, Maud heaved herself to her feet and gestured to Alice to follow her. Isabelle de Neuville raised her glass and smiled at Alice. ‘To our journey,’ she said. ‘What do your English flyers say? Happy landings? Here’s to happy landings!’

Alice seized the opportunity to taste her drink and annoy Maud further by not instantly leaping to her feet. Under her lowering gaze, Alice took a second sip and a third and though, truth to tell, she did not quite like the bitter aftertaste of the strange concoction, she defiantly drained her glass.

At this moment, sheepishly and with a torrent of French, Madame de Neuville’s maid sidled up to her. She was dark, she was slim, she was, in Maud’s opinion, unsuitably fashionably dressed for her station in life and she was, furthermore, in a shrill bad temper which she took no pains to disguise. She seemed put out to find her mistress in conversation and, after an initial look of surprise directed at Alice, she favoured her with a hostile glower. To add to Alice’s embarrassment at the display and to Maud’s gratification, she at once embarked on a furious and whispered quarrel with her mistress.

‘There, you see!’ said Maud as they followed the Cook’s agent down from the peace of the Blue Train bar into the hubbub of the main station. ‘Now you see what will happen if you pick up with anyone who may address you. You are abroad now. This is Paris where all the undesirables of Europe congregate. You see the kind of company you’re in. Like mistress, like maid, if you ask me! Neither of them better than they should be. Maid, indeed!’

‘I thought Madame de Neuville was very nice,’ said Alice. ‘And what lovely clothes!’

‘Clothes! Are they paid for? And, if they are paid for, who paid for them? That is the kind of question you have to ask yourself when you take up with a stranger.’

‘Was she,’ said Alice, ‘do you think, a demi-mondaine?’

She wasn’t entirely sure what the words meant but had an image of risk, danger and glamour and at that moment she very much wanted to be associated with it and dissociated from the world of Maud Benson with its careful checks and counterbalances.

‘Demi-mondaine! Huh! Fully-mondaine, I shouldn’t wonder,’ sniffed Maud. ‘Most Frenchwomen are, you’ll find. Now, come along!’

On arrival at the train they saw their luggage under the eye of the Cook’s man and in the charge of porters in peaked caps and blue smocks loaded into the luggage compartment. They also saw Madame de Neuville and her maid no longer in altercation watching expensive luggage being loaded likewise. Alice made her way in Maud’s wake, chirruping happily at the sight of the sleek and gleaming blue painted coachwork of the train, and they were handed by their agent into their reserved seats in the Pullman train under the management of the wagons-lits company. Alice was astonished by the elegance. She thought the attentive liveried stewards with their cream and umber kepis the most glamorous thing she had ever seen.