Alexandra couldn’t ignore her. The woman didn’t seem much older than she was at just twenty, and was obviously very upset. She was also speaking English, albeit with an American accent.

‘Come on! It’s all right. I’ll help you.’ Alexandra crouched down and started gathering up vegetables into the skirt of her mac.

‘It’s so kind of you to help,’ said the woman, sounding slightly less as if she were about to cry. ‘But unless you’ve got a bag, we might as well just leave all this here!’

Alexandra looked at her lap: the woman had a point; she couldn’t walk with all this clutched to her stomach. ‘We could fill our pockets, I suppose. Oh, look at that garlic!’ Accustomed as she was to tight little garlic bulbs, the large purplish item, the size of a tennis ball, reminded her of the cookery course she had just finished in London. The first thing Mme Wilson had said was how pathetic the garlic was in England. This garlic was very obviously French.

‘Take it if you like,’ said the woman. ‘I have no pockets. I’m never going to get to use it now.’

‘I’m sure things aren’t that bad,’ said Alexandra soothingly. ‘Put what you can in your handbag—’

The woman waggled a tiny box purse in Alexandra’s direction.

‘Ok, my pockets, then. And I can put some in my handbag, although maybe not the cabbage.’ Alexandra’s bag was a vintage postal bag and was fairly capacious but not big enough for something the size of a human head.

‘It’s so kind of you, but I haven’t got anything I could put vegetables in. I don’t even know why I bought them. I’m supposed to be having a dinner party tonight and I don’t have a menu! I can’t cook and I can’t even shop for one! My husband is going to be so disappointed in me.’

‘Is he quite a new husband?’ Alexandra felt he must be, given how young this woman was.

‘Very new. And at this rate I wonder if we’ll make it to a year. Tonight is the first big dinner party he’s asked me to arrange and I’ve already failed!’ The woman was still distressed but not weeping. ‘Look, can we go somewhere and get a drink? Even just a coffee? I haven’t spoken English to anyone except my husband – and of course he’s American, like me – since we got to Paris. And that wouldn’t be so bad except I don’t speak French!’