She came towards me – she had been looking at a copy of some magazine lying on the counter – hand outstretched.

‘Martha Millar. Martha as in “Washington”. And you are which Caldicott? I forget.’

‘William.’

‘Excuse me. Head like a sieve. But it doesn’t even retain the important stuff. It’s Thursday. I come into the market sometimes. Shall we sit down somewhere? A coffee?’

‘Perhaps not here. They usually wash down the bar at this hour.’

She eased the strap of a bulging sling-bag over her shoulder. ‘Boring. I’m from L’Hermitage, but I guess you already know that? Do you know the Sporting? Just across the square. It’ll be busy, market day, but I reckon we’ll get in.’

She led me briskly across the square, filled now with trestle tables, sagging shade-umbrellas, boxes and sacks, bewildered chickens, tied by their legs, rabbits hunched in cages, fruit and vegetables in spilling mounds, eggs in large crocks, people shouting, laughing, weighing, selling.

Pushing into the Sporting, she said, ‘Very Bruegel. Nothing changes.’

The place was crowded but she found a table at the back between the end of the bar-counter and the WC. Bentwood chairs, plastic-covered tables, poppies and cornflowers, a small bottle of Maggi sauce, salt and pepper.

She dumped her bag among these, calling out above the noise to a girl behind the counter, who seemed to know her, for two coffees.

‘Coffee? It’s just to play with while we talk. Okay? This bag has every goddamned thing of mine in it. Except perhaps my soul. And I lost that years ago somewhere. Mislaid it.’

We sat opposite each other under an advertisement for someone’s ice cream.

‘You gather that your letter got to Mr Millar? He’s my brother. I live in the little lodge. He suggested I come visit you.’

‘That was civil.’

‘He can be. On occasion.’ She adjusted the plastic combs in her hair. ‘Do you know Brent Millar? A name with which you are familiar?’

‘He writes? You do mean the writer?’

‘I do mean the writer. He’d be ill with rage if you did not. Brent Millar has an elevated opinion of himself. Elevated. He’s hardly known in England, which infuriates him.’

‘I thought, I don’t know why, that he lived in Paris.’

‘He does. Île Saint-Louis, but he prefers it here when he’s writing. Less hassle.’

The coffee arrived on a tin tray. She set out the cups. ‘Don’t you write? I think that your brother told Brent that you do?’ So. James had been discussed at L’Hermitage. We begin.

‘Nothing alarming. I mean intellectual. I write the kind of books that people leave behind on airplanes.’

She milked the coffee heavily, having first removed the wrinkled skin with a degree of distaste, dumping it on the tray. ‘Mock modesty is not a beguiling quality.’

‘Well. I suppose I mean that I am not in your brother’s league.’