but soon I realised that it wasn’t entirely Léon de Valmy’s fault. Philippe systematically avoided him. He would only go down the library corridor with me when we had seen the wheelchair safely out beyond the ornamental ponds or at the far side of the rosery; he seemed to have the faculty for hearing the whisper of its wheels two corridors away, when he would invariably drag at my hand, persuading me with him to vanish out of his uncle’s sight.
