Even then, d'Argila believes, she didn't really intend to confess. 'He's a good journalist. I'm not sure she followed too precisely what he said. I don't think she meant to tell at that time.' It may well be that his personality had something to do with it. De St Jorre is an engaging, serious man, who was respectful of Aury's literary achievement and clearly would have had no interest in writing about her in a sensationalist way. Desforges thinks she did intend to reveal it: 'She didn't like lying, and she was relieved.' In the subsequent television interview, Aury herself said she had waited until her parents were dead, and then for a little more time to pass: 'When you learn that it was written by a very old lady it loses some of its scandal.'
The news broke on 1 August, when the French were on holiday; it was not until people returned to Paris on the 15th that it became a scandal. Then there were articles in the tabloids, photographs and requests for interviews. This was a book that had never been out of print, had been bought by millions, and during the 1960s was the most widely read contemporary French novel outside France. (Not much has changed: the day I spoke to Philippe d'Argila, he'd just signed a new contract for Greek publication).
Dominique Aury's life had, however, already changed in the only way she really cared about, in 1968 when Jean Paulhan died. 'I lived with him for 11 or 14 years, I can't remember,' she told Pola Rapaport when they met to film the last footage of her, shortly before her death. 'The last part of my being alive, of my life being alive. After that, I didn't. I stopped. Everything.'
Waiting in his hospital room, night after night, fresh from work on the other side of Paris, she wrote A Girl in Love, the third-person account of the writing of Story of O, as he lay dying. It was published soon after, with the original last, rejected, chapter, as Return to the Chateau . Why she consented to publish this abandoned part after so long is a mystery, not least because she prefaced it with a disclaimer: 'The pages that follow are a sequel to Story of O. They deliberately suggest the degradation of that work, and cannot under any circumstances be integrated into it.'
Perhaps it was that she wanted A Girl in Love published and felt she needed to bulk it out. Perhaps she needed money, as Pauvert may have done.
'I think she published the sequel to please Pauvert, to thank him for all he had done,' says d'Argila.
She may have been past caring. After Paulhan died, according to Jacqueline, Dominique put together a book of recollections of him. 'After that, she kind of gave up her interest in the world. She pulled back from the world and lost her short-term memory.'
Dominique Aury was able to conceal her identity for so long because she looked so unlike an author of a raunchy book. 'She was very self-effacing,' remembers Jacqueline. 'She used to wear very pretty costumes, but not at all showy: very soft, muted colours which really matched her personality.'