Matilda had a thing about arrivals. On planes, even when not working on foreign policy, she wore tailored suits and carried a valise, as if on her way to an important meeting, or in the event of becoming ejected, disembodied over enemy territory, needing to command as much respect as a man, as Roosi, for instance, or any of her colleagues. Nothing could be done about shots fired by narcissistic young men. One had killed her brother.

And now she found herself alighting from a taxi at the head of the circular driveway to the Grand-Hôtel, Cabourg, looking as bourgeois as young Marcel, arriving with his grand-maman, seeking a cure for his asthma. He had fictionalised the location as Balbec. Matilda gazed up at red awnings shaped like cloche hats, and found herself wheezing in sympathy with the young Proust—not so much the older one who sometimes seemed to her amoral—nodding at the doorman as she entered through the rotating doors. If Cabourg in high summer made no difference to her lungs, she could only conclude that her allergy was personal and brought about by the limitations of her relationship with Roosi because he had loved her brother.