I shake my head. Of course I don’t. We’re two French girlies together, a slightly exotic addition to this busy little town, but once again I’m struck by how childlike this woman can be. It’s nice. She has a candour, and a simplicity, that I find deeply refreshing. Parisian women, especially, can be far too cool, too detached, too ironique, for their own good. Not Christianne.

By now we’ve arrived at the beach. Five hours earlier, with most of Budleigh still in bed, it turns out that my new friend and her buddies were swimming from the far end of the long crescent of pebbles.

‘I’ll show you exactly where another time.’ She squeezes my arm. ‘Today, ma chérie? Today, we take the coastal path.’

We set off again. Like many big women, Christianne is slightly flat-footed and we stroll slowly along the promenade in the sunshine while she yabbers on in French. She might be an eager child at school in the queue for lunch, I’m thinking. She blitzes me with questions about movie-making, about celebs I might have met, and most of all she wants a helping or two of my private life. Am I married? Do I have kids? Am I happy? There’s a pleasing artlessness about this curiosity of hers, and she nods when I briefly describe the wreckage that my one and only husband left behind.

‘Men can be loubards,’ she says gravely.

‘You know about loubards?’ I try to hide my surprise. Loubard means ‘yob’.

‘Yes. Not Andy. Andy is sweet. That man is my rock. He looks after me. He keeps me safe. But other men, especially when I was young, back home …’ She shakes her head. ‘You have someone else now?’

‘Had.’ I tell her about Pavel’s stroke, and try to do justice to the kind of person he was. I tell her about our brief couple of years together, and how his passing – utterly predictable – left me short-changed, as well as bereft.

‘You thought he was immortal or something? This writer guy?’

‘I never thought he’d die. Not properly. Not forever. Maybe his flesh and blood. Maybe that. But not the essence of him. His ideas. His imagination. What he could do with a single thought.’

It’s true. The way Pavel could plait one aperçu against another, and come up with something so different, so original, so out there that it would take my breath away, always astonished me. Grown-ups aren’t supposed to do that. Only kids and fairies.

‘You loved this man? Truly loved him?’ Christianne has paused for a moment to catch her breath as the path begins to steepen.