She shrugs in the way she does when she wants to keep life at arm’s length. ‘Not here, but near. That way,’ she jerks a thumb, ‘keep going out of town, past the skatepark, following the graffiti trail. Before that, we were in Marseille. Mostly Marseille,’ she says. ‘We tried living here when she wanted to get clean, but it didn’t last. She ended up spending more and more time back in Marseille.’

‘Is this …?’ I start.

‘She died in Marseille. The gendarmes came to tell me,’ she says. There’s a hollowness in her eyes I haven’t seen before. A deep well where the love is missing.

‘Maman,’ says Tomas, too tired to walk now. Maybe we should get a pushchair for him.

Stephanie scoops him into her arms. Then she looks at me. ‘Here, take him,’ she says, and hands him to me. ‘I’ll go there alone and see if JB’s in. If he is, I’ll speak to him first. Then I’ll come back to you if he wants to meet Tomas.’ The hand-over happens without me thinking about it.

‘You sure you don’t want me to come with you? Rhi or Lou could look after Tomas.’

She shakes her head. ‘You look after him, please.’

She’s entrusting me with everything that means anything to her in the world.

‘We’ll take a little walk over to that bit of greenery,’ I point, ‘and look at the flowers, les fleurs, eh, Tomas?’

She drops her head and walks away just as she did when she arrived, like a whirlwind, in my life just a few weeks ago. Both our lives have changed since our worlds literally collided. Ralph pulls at his lead, wanting to sniff and explore. What an unusual bunch we must seem: Lou, with her Dolly Parton looks, Rhi on her phone, ringing the salon back home, me, Tomas and Stephanie, all of us here for each other. All of us with a past that’s left its footprints in the landscape of our lives.