‘You didn’t look bad; you just looked sick.’

‘Thank you, honey, but as gracious as you’re being, you’re a total liar.’

‘In any case, just as Marie is starting to get well enough to actually see some of Paris—’

‘More than the hotel room—’

‘Yes, more than the room – I come down with food poisoning!’

‘The poor man! We’re pretty sure it was the crepes, right, honey?’

‘I think so, yes. We had stopped at this little café near Musée d’Orsay for crepes in the middle of the afternoon – and you know, I nearly told the woman no cream—’

‘I told her no cream—’

‘That’s right you did. Anyway, I didn’t, and I’m pretty sure it was the culprit.’

I was fascinated by how they told the story together, each of them performing their part as though the whole thing was scripted. Marie continued.

‘But of course, food poisoning doesn’t typically come on right away, so there we are at dinner that night up in Montmartre. And I’d pulled myself together for this dinner, because it was our last night and I was so desperate to have at least one romantic evening out with my husband, even if I still didn’t feel the best—’

‘You did look beautiful.’

‘Thanks, honey.’

‘Anyway, right after they cleared our dinner plates, it hits. I mean, full force. I had to excuse myself from the table.’

‘And the poor man is gone for ages, and I’m not quite sure what’s happening—’

‘But as soon as I get back to the table, I’m like, “Honey, we need to leave. Now!”’

‘I practically threw money at our waiter – didn’t I, hon?’

‘She really did. The waiter had to pick it up off the floor. So, we run out of the restaurant and hail a cab—’

‘Thank god there was one right on the street outside—’

‘And we get back to the hotel just in time, and then all hell lets loose.’

‘And he spent the rest of the night sitting on the toilet and vomiting into the sink. The poor man.’

‘And the next morning, we’re packing, because we’re taking the train back to London that day, and I am really struggling.’

‘And of course, we didn’t have any more of the good drugs, which keep things in check, so to speak, because I’d finished those off the day before,’ said Marie.

‘So, we finish packing, grab a cab from the hotel, and we have the cab driver stop off at a pharmacy on the way to the station.’

‘And there I am using my best high school French. “Mon mari est très malade” – my husband is sick – but beyond that, I haven’t got the vocab. So the pharmacist pretends to cough and we’re shaking our heads.’