Last summer, he took them all on a trip to Morocco, along with Vanessa’s friend Souad and Souad’s son, Morgan. They went in Max’s van. They drove down to the southern tip of Spain and then they took a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar, and camped on a beach outside Tangier.

It was the most fun Rat had ever had in her life.

At first she hadn’t been too pleased about Souad and Morgan’s horning in on their adventure, but Max had explained to her that Souad was sick and when you’re sick, you need cheering up even more than at normal times. Which was typical of Max: he had the saddest face you ever saw, but he wanted everybody else to be happy.

Vanessa was pretty sweet on Max, too, but his indecisiveness drove her nuts. When he spent the night, sometimes the next morning Rat would find him in Vanessa’s bed, sometimes he’d be sleeping on the sofa, and sometimes in the van. Eventually, Max decided he was definitely the gay end of bisexual. He’d fallen in love with a doctor who was home on leave from Réunion, and when the doctor’s vacation was over, Max moved to Réunion with him.

When he left France, Max sold Vanessa his van for almost nothing. She’d been working the brocantes with him for a couple of years by then, and she had a knack for it, Max said: it was a good way of life for someone who was resourceful and independent-minded. Way better than waitressing. Besides, it was one of the few jobs where a single mother could bring along her kid: bung Rat in the van with a lollipop and a stack of old comics, and she’d be happy all day.

As brocante country went, the Pyrénées-Orientales had good pickings. Not for antiques, but for the almost-new. The coast was full of condo developments, where people were always moving in and out. End of June, when lots of landlords kicked out their year-round tenants to cash in on summer rentals, it was a gold mine. Suddenly, faced with a car trunk that wouldn’t close, people were a little more willing to get rid of an old cassette player or a carton of their kids’ outgrown ski clothes.