Nicolas, at first, pretended he couldn’t hear me. I had to ask twice. ‘The handles?’ I said. ‘I’ve got a man who might be interested in them.’ I swept my hand over the new, smooth wall. It was cool and satisfying to touch, and smelled of the earth, of the parts of the earth that saw no light. The seam where new plaster met old was almost imperceptible. Work worthy of an aspirant in the Compagnons – in spite of his dishevelled look and seedy demeanour.

‘They were worthless,’ he said. ‘I dumped them with the rest of the rubbish.’ He pinched a few slender nails from a pot and held them between his lips, took one and held it to a length of wood.

I put my hand on his arm to stop him working.

He looked at my hand, as if it had scorched him, then at my face, then slowly removed the nails from his mouth. There was an inflamed red spot at the side of his nose.

‘That’s precisely the opposite of what I asked you to do,’ I said. ‘I know all about the Compagnons. I know what they do to thieves.’

‘You don’t know anything.’

‘My father was a baker, a sédentaire. He spoke often of his tour and all the ceremony and the rules. He was very proud.’

‘I didn’t steal anything.’

‘The handles,’ I said, ‘and the hinges, or perhaps the money you now carry in your pocket, will be returned to Madame Debord by this afternoon. If not, it won’t be hard for me to find your Compagnon house. I could ask there for the handles?’ I removed my hand from his arm. ‘I only want this job done well. I have no desire to get you into trouble.’

He sniffed sharply, then looked up, alarmed. Madame Debord was standing in the doorway, watching us, watching me.

‘I wonder,’ she said, addressing me, ‘if we might go for a walk. I cannot stand the dust for another minute, and I think we can leave Monsieur here on his own.’

In the vestibule, as I helped Madame with her coat, I asked her if she wasn’t worried he might steal from us. She looked at me, with a respect no one had ever afforded me in all my life, and said, ‘No. Somehow I don’t think he will.’

When we returned a few hours later, Madame a little sleepy after a glass of wine in the charcuterie, I found that a small collection of francs and centimes had been left on the dusty kitchen counter, the money weighted in place by a triangular shard of porcelain.

That night, while Madame drank her liqueur in bed, we sat companionably in candlelight. She tucked in blankets and I in my dressing gown, darning a pair of stockings. The work soothed me, each pull of thread and tug of fabric, and the stitching fell into the rhythm of Madame’s breathing as she settled into sleep, and soon the job was done and I laid the stockings in my lap.