Maybe this was what all bars were like – people eyeing each other up, checking out newcomers like kids at a recreation ground keeping tabs on who was coming in. Not even with any serious intention, more the way you would scroll past images on a screen, to keep yourself entertained and pass the time.

Or maybe this was just what French bars were like. I didn’t have a lot to compare it to. I’d been to the Dog and Duck down the end of our road for a lemonade and salt and vinegar crisps, but that was about it.

We sat down and I studied the drinks menu and picked out mocktails for me and Mum. Then Mark went off to the bar to order them and I stretched and exhaled and tried to relax and look around a little.

The piano player came to the end of something and ran his hands over the keyboard with a little flourish. How great it would feel, to be able to do that – to be so confident, for your hands to work away as if you didn’t even have to think about what you were doing. Then he looked up and caught my eye.

He wasn’t as ancient as I’d thought at first. Maybe it was hard for him to gauge how old I was, too. It didn’t seem as though he realised I was only sixteen and barely legal – though most of my peers had been busy flouting the laws around what you could and couldn’t do at certain ages since they were at least fourteen.

I was the first to look away, but he’d made such an impression on me that even when I was just looking down at the table it was like I was still taking him in.

He had dark eyes and dark hair, turning silver at the temples, and he was playing that piano like he was doing the rest of us a favour, not like he was being paid to do it. I was pretty sure men like that didn’t exist in England. An English piano player would have been pale and hungry-looking and harassed, as if he was waiting for someone to come over and ask him to play ‘Chopsticks’.

My reflection in the mirror on the other side of the wall looked flushed and slightly dishevelled. But not bad, not bad at all. The lighting in the bar emphasised my cheekbones: if I tilted my head there were deep shadows underneath them. It brightened my hair and eyes, too – I looked blonder than usual, and bluer-eyed. It was like me with a filter on. A filter composed of the Grand Hotel and crevettes and Armagnac and being hundreds of miles south of home.

The piano player started his next tune. He caught my eye again and slowly, deliberately bowed his head, as if in tribute.

Mark reappeared with our drinks on a tray, and set them down on the table. I raised my glass to him and said, ‘Here’s to the new arrival.’