Today was the day when all would be decided and they would know how rich they had become.

Theresa was totally on edge. William and Benjamin had pulled the straws to be the two who went up to Paris to attend the sale, while the others sat round the table in Theresa’s apartment, waiting for the phone to ring with news. When the draw happened Theresa felt relieved to be staying at home, but now that the sale was imminent she wished she was in the saleroom as the anticipation was starting to make her feel queasy.

She had made sandwiches and tea, but felt unable even to look at them. Carol and Zoe hunched over the table. The phone sat in the centre, pride of place, like a Sunday roast.

Sally was with Theresa, wiping down the tops and packing the dishwasher, fussing around her while she laid a tray with plates, cups and cutlery.

‘I just need to keep busy,’ Sally said as she sprayed a whiff of surface cleaner over the fridge door and dabbed at an imaginary smear.

‘It’s like waiting for a prison verdict,’ said Zoe.

‘I’d prefer to think it’s more like knowing whether or not we have the X-factor,’ drawled Carol, a beautiful American from Muncie, Indiana, who had in fact, before undergoing surgery to become herself, been christened and brought up as Mark. ‘Even if we get the lowest estimate, I feel I have to say that. Only half a million? Gee, I’d be happy as a clam being forced to share that half a million between the six of us. But if we hit the bingo, and we bag several millions each, well . . .’

‘Dream on, dear,’ Zoe interrupted Carol’s reverie. ‘If we get the lower estimate, you’ll only be sharing what remains of the half million after you’ve paid me back, paid off all our creditors and got La Mosaïque back on its feet. And as the debts are mounting daily, frankly, dear, what remains to be shared from five hundred grand would be mere pin money.’

‘If there’s anything left at all,’ added Sally, puffing the spray at a nearby light-switch and polishing it. ‘We have to strike it big or we are doomed.’

The problem was that, for the last three years, the owners of La Mosaïque had steered their way through extremely rough waters. And their difficulties had not been brought on by their own lack of industry or imagination. Twice, since the joyous opening, the restaurant had come really close to bankruptcy.

It was only a few months after they opened that the result of the Brexit vote had shaken them all, leaving them worried that, depending on how the whole catastrophe was managed, they might be left high and dry, unable to continue working or even living here in France. The worst scenario that they could imagine had them all being forced to give up everything they had worked so hard for here, and obliged to return to a country which, for the majority of them, had not been home for a very long time. Theresa felt she had only just upped sticks to settle here, and the thought of doing it all in reverse was too horrible, particularly as she would then consider it all to have been a failure. It would certainly look that way, she knew, to her not-so-close friends in London. Not only did the referendum result leave the gang of six owners of La Mosaïque in limbo, but it impacted the profits of the business too. The other local expats, who made up a fair percentage of their regular clientele, started pulling in their horns, preparing for the worst. It was obvious why they did this. The first thing that people who feared for their future cut back on was inevitably the unnecessary expense of dining out. Tourism from Great Britain also diminished during this time.