My boss at the cafe often flirted with men. She was petite, in her mid-sixties, and had the face of a woodland creature – small, inquisitive, bright-eyed, with blinking dark lashes. Years of wearing heavy earrings had dragged on her earlobes, making two vertical slits of the piercing holes, but this did not stop her wearing a pair of large gold hoops.

Sylvie was single and unencumbered and she liked to enjoy herself. If she forgot somebody’s name, she breezily told them, ‘Good to see you.’ If she wanted to compliment someone, she told them they looked great. She disliked creepy men, shrinks and feminists, but she wasn’t dogmatic. She made exceptions. Once, she told me she had seen Germaine Greer on TV. ‘The interviewer said that her marriage had failed. “No,” she said. “It was just short.” I thought, good on her. She looked great.’

Sylvie had been married once herself, to a man who lived in France. Their union, too, was brief. It left no bitter feelings.

She had not dated for some time when I met her, but she hadn’t gone off men, and flirting brightened her regimented life. There was nothing austere in her habit of wearing black; she cut the front out of her tops to show her tanned décolletage. She owned the lease on the cafe and worked there six days a week. Each year she took a two-week break and holidayed somewhere warm; otherwise she worked nonstop, insisting, ‘I feel great.’

The cafe was her dominion. It sat on a hill overlooking Sydney Harbour. Cut off from the city by a loop of expressway, it was almost, but not quite, stranded, kept apart from the skyscrapers. Inside, the sun streamed in through the old sash windows, striking the gleaming floors and jars of preserved lemons. Having been in business a long time, Sylvie got by on her wits, making use of her charm and cunning as much as her culinary skills. Forever afraid of losing her lease, she was shameless in courting the owner of the building, plying the old man with free lunches and wedges of chocolate torte. She hoped he wouldn’t realise that he was footing her power bills, a detail that had slipped his notice for years.

She was a terrible flirt with the electrician too, sending him coquettish texts when the oven gave her trouble. When we teased her about it she pretended to be shocked. ‘Don’t be revolting, Rowan, I shudder to think,’ she said, tapping out a message full of exclamation marks. Other times she would come clean. ‘I know, I’m vile. I’m a dirty creature.’