One evening as I was heading up the stairs, his door was open. Rinaldi was standing just inside. We remarked on the gusty weather, and he asked where I was from. He said, ‘L’Australie! C’est loin!’ I told him that my flight from Sydney to Paris had taken twenty-eight hours. Rinaldi flapped a veal-coloured hand and looked pleasingly aghast. I must have wanted to convey that I was no stranger to heroic air travel because I found myself telling him where I’d been born. I heard my earnest, teacherly voice add, ‘There are people from all over the world in Australia.’

Rinaldi said, ‘Un pays poubelle.’ His tone was affable – he was merely filing away the fact that Australia was a garbage bin for humans – and he smiled as he spoke. He said that we’d have to have a drink sometime. I went on up the stairs.

After that, it seemed that Rinaldi’s door was open whenever I went past at the end of the day. Warm air was an invitation streaming out. There’d be a light under the door to his living room but his hallway was always dark. A long coat hung there in the shadows – I’d forget about it and then, seeing it from the corner of my eye, think that someone was standing there.

Days of rain gave way to an urgent blue sky. The wind was hissing at my windows when I woke, but the sky and the sun shouted that this was a You Have Won the Car and the Holiday and the Money kind of day. I went downstairs joyfully, stepped into the street, and the mistral struck. Water from my eyes ran down my face as I sped across squares, along the tight, wind-funnelling streets. A figurine in an eighteenth-century nativity scene at the local museum came into my mind: a shepherd staggering in a wind-swirled cloak, one hand hanging onto his hat.

At the market, Sandrine had abandoned her rock-goddess look for a quilted coat, a scarf pulled up over her mouth and a beanie. The mistral would last three days, or possibly six or nine, she told me – it was always a multiple of three. And snow was predicted the following week, for Toussaint. I said that I’d be spending the holiday weekend in Paris. Sandrine was of the opinion that Paris was a filthy place. A woollen finger pointed to her ponytail. ‘Once I was stuck there for a whole month. The pollution was so bad, I had to wash my hair every week.’

Rinaldi, wearing nothing warmer than a trench coat, was lurking near the letterboxes when I got back. I greeted him and would have continued up the stairs, but he stood in my way. A merry cackling started up behind the Bertys’ door, as if they could see me there, weighed down by shopping, with Rinaldi cutting off my escape.