After some pressing, she showed us the photo. Charles, now retired, was wearing a flying suit and standing in a field with a helmet under one arm. He was smiling broadly and screwing up his eyes in the sunlight. Beside him was an aircraft that looked too flimsy to be real. The plane – was it actually a plane? – resembled a red toy. It was a microlight, Sylvie told us. Charles had taken up flying as a hobby. A grand passion, he called it. He was working towards getting his passenger licence. Below the photo he had written Any interest? and added a winky face. There was a link to a website with the banner Microlighting is freedom!

Like ur onesie, she fired back as we watched. Not sure abt the jet.

There was a whoosh as she hit send, the sound of her message taking flight. It went winging across the oceans. The years fell away. Distance was nothing and she was having a great time, enjoying the renewal of the old romance.

I worked for Sylvie for several years, while at law school in Sydney. Elise, a high school friend, had got me the job. The interview went for two minutes before Sylvie said, ‘Can you come Sunday? Eleven sharp.’

She was a generous employer. She paid double the hourly rate of my last waitressing job. On quiet days, she sent me home on full pay to study. On busy days, when we did well, she slipped me extra money, tucking banknotes into my clothes as if I was a stripper. She smuggled bread and avocados into my bag, and the pages of my books suffered more than one green smear before I learned to do a search at the end of each shift.

Sylvie despaired for Elise, an art school graduate with masses of curly hair and big, startled-looking eyes. She sold as much as she could paint, but Sylvie thought she was squandering her talent, partying too much and making bad choices in men. ‘You’ve got to be serious,’ Sylvie told her. ‘You can’t sleep with just anyone.’

‘Didn’t you?’ Elise asked.

‘Darling, I won’t deny it. But that was in the sixties. It isn’t the sixties now. Do as I say, not as I do.’

For me, the job meant the ease of money, or more of it. Earning more meant I could buy the shoes I needed and the books I didn’t. But it wasn’t just the money that made life better and less constrained – Sylvie had a talent for living well, a knack for doing things in a certain style and enjoying herself, and in working for her some of that ethos rubbed off on me.