The four turbo-fan jet engines bellowed against the rain and the wind, their roar echoing across the acres of wet tarmac, grass and concrete, bouncing off the walls of the hangars, and then dying down as the aircraft slowed to taxiing speed. I stood, in the dark, with the rain concentrated above my head, by a poor gutter, into a raging stream that tore down the back of the neck of my boiler suit.

Outside the small French town of Carentan; on the route nationale 13, about fifty kilometres from Cherbourg, is a Routier restaurant much loved by French lorry drivers. One driver, Jean-Pierre Edier, had been looking forward to having dinner there all the way up from Montélimar, which he had left that morning. He had in fact already driven through Carentan on his way up to Cherbourg to deliver his load of nougat, bound for Quebec. Now he was shot of his load, he could relax, eat his dinner and have a good long sleep in the bunk bed at the back of the Volvo’s luxurious cab – since it was a Sunday, he could only deliver, he couldn’t collect. In the morning, he would pick up a load of cane sugar which he would deliver to Montélimar.

As Edier reached the doorway of the restaurant, he belched. A massive bowl of oysters, winkles, whelks, shrimps and crab, followed by white fish in cognac, followed by a hefty tournedos marinated in red wine, followed by a greedy chunk of camembert, followed by apple-and-meringue pie, washed down by a litre of vin ordinaire and a half-pint of cognac très rough, was getting near the limit the much-abused belly inside his sprawling frame could cope with. He shoved two francs inside a Space Invaders machine and lost all three of his men without firing a shot. He shoved two francs into a pinball machine and lost all five balls in rapid succession. He wisely decided it was time to call it a day.

As he negotiated his bulk through the flimsy doorway, the chilly night air blasted his face. He blinked twice, and stared across the road at where he was certain he had parked his company’s thirty-two tons of lorry and trailer; he blinked again, because what he was now staring at was an empty space, and none of the spaces nearby that were occupied by other vehicles was occupied by the vehicle that his gaze sought.

‘Merde!’ said Jean-Pierre Edier, wondering if calling the police in his inebriated state would be the smartest thing. ‘Merde!’ he repeated.