The man says with robust authority: 'It's an all-weather mountain tent. Two-man.'
     The boy is thrilled. A tent to weather all conditions. In which he and his father will be two men.
     The man looks up - for the first time - at the path they will take, which runs from the gate to the brow of the hill. Then he groans: 'I didn't bring a compass.'
     The boy's eyes are suddenly wide with fear and dismay: not with the notion that they'll get lost, but because of the way the man's shoulders slumped and the tent in his hand dropped back onto the boot floor.
     But then the man says quickly, almost brightly, 'Never mind!' and swings the tent out.
     The boy breathes with relief. 'I've got a compass,' he cries, 'and guess what, I forgot mine too!' "What do you think of Nice, then?" he asked. 揘ow you抳e seen it, a bit??
     "It's nice."
     Sam lowered his head and looked at her from under his eyebrows. "I don't think you can say that."
     "Say what?"
     "Say that Nice is nice. It sounds funny in English. How nice Nice is."
     "How would you say it in French, then?" Helen said with an undertone of irritation.
     Sam shrugged. He hadn't meant to insult her; or perhaps he had. "I'm not sure the French can be quite so uncommitted when they want to praise something. Do you mean it's pretty?"
     "I suppose."
     "Then you'd say Nice est jolie."
     "Nice est jolie."
     "Yes. And I suppose it is. But there are hundreds of other places in France that would knock spots off it."
     "But we're in Nice now," Helen said quietly. "Don't you like it?"
     Sam looked around. The pillars and most of the walls in the Cafe Promenade were faced with mirrors. It was difficult to tell how big the place was, or what was real and what was a reflection. He saw himself sipping tea. He saw Helen's profile nearby and the back of her head some distance away. He listened to the background Europop for a moment and noticed that one of the waiters was singing along. He wanted to say that Nice struck him, in November, as being a well-kept compound for rich invalids. He'd never seen such a density of chemist's shops in a town centre. Nice was artificial, contrived, clean, controlled, and dull. But Helen had wanted to come here; and he'd agreed. So he said, "It's all right. The weather's certainly good. Better than sitting around in England watching the rain and waiting for your house to flood."
    
He ought to have remembered it when he went upstairs for the torch. He might have thought of it if he hadn't already heard from his room the intent murmurings in the kitchen, and known the sort of thing his mother would be saying, and wanted badly to get back down there and make her stop.