‘My mum,’ I tell her. ‘It’s her friend’s flat. A very loaded friend. He’s away for four months, so I’m house-sitting.’

Alice raises an eyebrow. ‘Bloody hell, you’re so lucky.’

She’s right, really: I was. This whole Paris thing was Mum’s idea in the first place. She didn’t react well to the news that Daphne and I were taking a break (‘That girl’s the best bloody thing that’s ever happened to you’ were her exact words). And so, when this Saint-Sulpice flat-sitting opportunity came up, she practically insisted I take it. It would be a breath of fresh air, she said: a chance to properly clear my head and come to my senses, instead of rattling around our London flat on my own while Daphne was off in New York.

It seemed like a good idea. And since I was freshly unemployed at the time – Thump having folded, unceremoniously, in April – I even got it into my head that I could live out a clichéd writer-in-Paris fantasy here: spend four months having another crack at penning something that was actually publishable.

That was the plan, then: write a masterpiece while reevaluating my relationship. Simple. But then I bumped into Alice, and that simple plan became much more complicated.

She sips her hot chocolate, and reaches into her bag for a packet of Gauloises. At uni, she only ever smoked roll-ups, and I remember being quite impressed at how sophisticated – how French – she seemed to have become.

‘So,’ she says, lighting a long, thin cigarette. ‘Are we doing today in English or in French? You did say you needed to practise. On pourrait au moins essayer?’

‘Erm … Je …’ I give up instantly. This whole situation is confusing and surreal enough in my native language. There’s no way I can possibly stagger through this minefield of a day in French. ‘Sorry … can we just stick with English for the moment?’

She sighs in mock disappointment. ‘Honestly, Benjamin. Call yourself a Parisian?’

I can’t help laughing. ‘Not really, no.’

‘Well, you’ve only been here three months, I suppose,’ she says, ashing her cigarette. ‘Give it time.’

‘You’ve been here, what … two years now?’

She wrinkles her brow. ‘A year and a half. I told you last week.’

‘Yeah. Sorry. You did.’

She takes another long drag on her cigarette as she looks at me. ‘I still can’t believe you’re here, Ben. That we’re here together, on Christmas Day. It’s mad.’

As I meet her eyes, I feel a flicker of the excitement I felt on this day originally. ‘Yeah. It really is.’