‘First of May!’ he said. ‘We give all our friends a little brin of muguet; these are for my tables.’

‘I’ll not be in for lunch, Eugène.’

‘Ah! Then I can have your table, excellent.’

‘I will eat Chez Titin.’

‘You have booked?’

‘No. Need I?’

Eugène rolled eyes heavenwards. ‘A holiday! She’ll be like us, complet.’

Madame Mazine picked up the telephone behind her counter and said she would ‘have a little word, just one person?’ I thanked her, Eugène hurried on, and I went into the square.

A full market seemed to be taking place. Stalls packed with little clay pots of muguet, bowls and ‘arrangements’, fearsome things covered in nylon bows, moss and cellophane speckled with hearts. The muguet almost smothered in the kitsch.

But everywhere flowers: sprays of cherry, almond and japónica, glass jars full of wild sweet-peas in clouds of gypsophila, wallflowers, sweet william, fat bunches of white and yellow daisies. All these, stuck in rusting tins among the vegetables, the broad beans, early peas, tiny bunches of wild asparagus bound with string, made the dullish day gloriously festive. The bar in Chez Titin was crammed, the room a fog of Gitanes smoke, the air sweet with the aniseed scent of Ricard, the sourness of cheap red, the pungency of strong coffee.

Through the arch, in comparative peace, the restaurant. Six or seven tables, a tank of angel fish, plastic nasturtiums, ivy-leaved wallpaper.

I had been given a small table in a far corner, a sprig of muguet set in a mustard glass, picholines de Provence in a saucer and the menu.

Titin, plump, sweating slightly, recommended the estouffade Provençale – beef, onions, a ‘soupçon’ of orange – accepted my order, and promised I’d be well satisfied.

I was, and made my way back to the hotel to face the chore which was before me up in my attic room.

Trying to make any kind of sense of the odd pieces of paper, bills, the half-diary, a few photographs, mostly unannotated, including the one of us all on the beach at Dieppe, plus the farewell letter which he left Florence, was almost impossible. There simply were no clues: he had been thorough in the destruction of his papers, that was clear. Sometimes I thought I had a clue, but it was never followed up, the half-diary was fragmented, days and whole months even were not filled, some seemed to have been deliberately ripped out.