It was a winter fox. Thin and ratty-looking. There was a hunger in its features that I somehow recognised. A solitary creature, it knew how to be alone. It looked at me like it knew me, like I was no sort of surprise, just a regular customer, no biggie. Like it was seeing an old acquaintance. And maybe we did know each other, this fox and I. It regarded me with intent, as if willing me to remember some old, half-buried knowledge – some pact of long ago.

That twilight encounter left an impression on me. The experience was one of coming to my senses; it took me back to a part of myself I had almost forgotten. Maybe foxes can do this; this is part of their magic. Just like that, I was reminded of my pre-law-school self. What are you doing? I asked myself as it trotted out of sight. What are you doing with your life?

But as I went on my way again, I decided that the fox was a messenger for Sylvie, not me. If it was a portent of things to come, surely it had to do with her long-lost husband, the Silver Fox.

And sure enough, as if on cue, she received an email from him that same night. She told me about it the next day. All was explained. Charles hadn’t gone cold on their correspondence at all: first, he had locked himself out of his phone, having confused his code with his bank card pin. Then he’d had his eyes lasered to correct his vision, and afterwards a troublesome infection had made it hard to look at a screen.

He wrote: At last I am better. I am writing this without glasses. I am an entirely new man! He loved the photo she had sent him. Just wonderful to see you, he wrote. <3 <3 <3. He remarked on the cafe, saying how charming it looked and how much he would like to see it.

It was just the thing to buoy her midwinter spirits. In the south of France, where it was summer, Charles flew his microlight over fields and towns, beaches and rocky coves. His messages arrived like warm drifts of air. They carried Sylvie through the bleak, cold days, bearing her along through the wind tunnels of the city and keeping her company at night when she went home to her flat. The email romance was back on, there had been nothing to fear, and all was well again in the garden of their affections.

‘You know he’s invited her to go over there,’ Elise told me one day in her studio.

‘What? Is she going to?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think she knows.’ Elise took a sip of beer. We were sharing a Coopers longneck that she’d poured into glasses. She squinted at a painting that she had propped against the wall, and now, looking unhappy, she turned it the other way.