Monsieur Laval delivered my monthly cylinders of gas. My street was too narrow for cars, so he’d park as close as possible and load the cylinders onto a wooden cart. I’d hear it shuddering over the cobblestones – that sound, too, belonged to Flaubert.

A little ritual had evolved on Monsieur Laval’s visits: after he’d huffed the last cylinder up the stairs, I’d hand over my rent, we’d drink a glass of wine, and Monsieur Laval would smoke a cigarette. When he next turned up, I remarked that I hadn’t seen Rinaldi in a while. Monsieur Laval said that he was often away for work. Sometimes work took him abroad – Belgium, Italy, ‘even as far as England’. I asked what kind of work Rinaldi did, but Monsieur Laval didn’t know. It was all very disappointing – I was hoping to hear that he’d moved out.

At the market, I told Sandrine about the small red fruit that I’d seen in the garrigue. They were arbouses, she said: winter strawberries that could be eaten raw or used in any recipe that called for berries. She couldn’t believe that I hadn’t picked them, and expressed it bluntly. ‘Vous avez raté l’occasion’ – I’d missed my chance.

The other thing I learned was that Sandrine was engaged to be married. Riad, her fiancé, lived in Algeria, where he worked at a hotel in Oran. She showed me a photo: a gap in a grin, grey hair cropped as close as a rug. They’d known each other for four years and been engaged for eighteen months. Sandrine had gone to Algeria at Christmas – her fiancé couldn’t visit her because he wasn’t allowed to enter France while his application for residency was pending. ‘I have an appointment at the préfecture next week. Second one. They say he’s using me so that he can live in France. They say an Arab could only be after my money – as if I have any! At my first appointment, some bastard asked why a Frenchman wasn’t good enough for me. I told him, “You know what Frenchmen did to Algerian women during the war? They raped them with broken Coca-Cola bottles.” But I have to watch my mouth. Otherwise they’ll find a reason to turn him down.’

I asked why they didn’t get married in Algeria to strengthen their case, and she told me that her fiancé was a widower – one of his sons was hostile to the relationship, she didn’t want complications. When Sandrine said mon fiancé, it sounded defiant and not at all like a spinsterish obsession. She took off her glove to show me her ring: a glinting speck.

In the days that followed, I wondered if I should talk to Monsieur Bisset about Riad’s application with a view to enlisting his help. But I was afraid of blundering in and doing harm. Sandrine had provided the préfecture with copies of their correspondence – if Monsieur Bisset were to study it, who could say what unfavourable conclusions he might draw from Riad’s non-French capital Ls?