The sun was blindingly bright as I drove over to L’Hermitage. The amazing thing about spring in Provence is that it arrives all of a sudden in a flurry and fluster of bud and blossom and then, just as suddenly, before one has even become adjusted to the splendours, it is instantly summer. There is no pause, no gradual slide into boskiness: the bloom is on the olives, the plum trees froth with white blossom, the grasses are all at once lush and green as if aware that, within a very few months, two to be exact, they will have become sere and brown under the relentless sun. Summer in Provence is fairly harsh. Burning, bold, prodigal. Spring, that evening, was already fading: summer was impatient.

The high gates were closed when I arrived precisely at 6.25 and sounded the horn. Martha Millar appeared garden-gloved, eye-patched, in a faded shirt, battered trousers and scuffed boots. Perversely, she wore a bright red scarf knotted frivolously into her hair, dragged back tightly from her good face. She waved a small hand fork at me, shouted at a dog which I could only hear, and pulled the gates wide.

‘Salut!’ she said. ‘Would you come right in and park just beyond the lodge? Cars are not encouraged up the drive. You’ll see why when you get to the house.’

I drove in just as an extremely large, glittering motorbike came roaring down towards us, scattering gravel, bouncing high on the ridges purposely constructed, it would appear, to cause any kind of vehicle to slow down and take care. But not, apparently, Daniel Jacquet, for he it was nakedly astride this huge Kawasaki who roared to a halt and adjusted his helmet. He was grinning. Miss Millar stood mutely, hands on her hips, the small fork sticking out like a metal hand.

‘You are a real bastard. You know that? Tomorrow you will rake all that shitty gravel back again. Why the hell do you have to show off every damn time you see someone in a car, for God’s sake? Killer instinct?’

He had fixed his helmet, that is to say he was wearing it now, without buckling the strap under his chin. He pulled down his visor, making himself instantly unrecognizable, and with a wave of one gauntleted fist swung into action and roared off towards Saint-Basile-les-Pins.

‘My brother was out of his skull to finance the bastard with that method of transport. Originally it was a modest affair, a village boy’s bike. He sulked for something bigger. He got it. Now he tears through the countryside like a naked Goth. One day,’ she started to close the gates, ‘one day, one really fine day, they’ll find him splattered all over a wall and that’ll be just great by me. Really neat.’