‘I hear you’re quite the celebrity,’ she greeted him drily. ‘So, what can I help you with? Only I am a bit busy, you know.’

‘I will try not to take too much of your valuable time,’ Philippe replied with a laugh in his voice. Everyone else might be impressed with his instant fame, but not Meredith. ‘As a matter of fact this isn’t a business call. I’m ringing to invite you out to dinner next Saturday night. Of course,’ there was a hint of challenge in his tone, ‘you may be far too busy to waste your time on a purely social occasion.’

For a moment even the poised and unfazeable Meredith was temporarily silenced. She took refuge in prevarication.

‘But what about the restaurant? Surely you can’t leave that on a Saturday night? Or are you inviting me to dine with you there?’

‘Of course not!’ She was annoyed to hear him laughing at her again. ‘That would hardly be a very romantic invitation, would it?’

There was an embarrassingly long pause during which Philippe wondered if he should rescue them both with some polite social cliché. Clearly this had been a mistake.

‘Thank you,’ Meredith replied at last, wondering why she felt the temptation to sabotage even something she had been half hoping for. ‘That would be delightful.’

Philippe whistled as he chopped the onions, giving his already impressive technique an extra flourish, making Jean-Christophe laugh out loud. ‘You should have been one of those TV chefs, then you’d have been really famous.’

‘Then thank God I wasn’t!’ replied his father. ‘I already got mobbed in the boulangerie for my modest level of media exposure. Madame Demarchelier from the blanchisserie even asked for my autograph!’

‘Go on, you love it!’ teased Jean-Christophe.

‘The good thing is, the mayor’s delighted. They’ve been deluged – his word, I expect he means five or six – by new applications for stalls.’

That name, Street Taste, flashed into his mind again. Why was it familiar? Had he read about it in the paper? He’d have to look it up when he got a moment. Some chance. He was so busy with the festival and all that needed to be arranged for it, as well as running this place, that he hardly had time to take a leak, let alone Google anything.

‘At least it’ll impress the châtelaine.’

‘Tu plaisantes! It takes more than a stupid radio experience to impress Mademoiselle Meredith Harding!’

But it wasn’t to Google that Philippe resorted later on when he finally got ten minutes for a coffee break, but to his own wallet.