The main square in the centre had an official name, but because it was egg-shaped everyone called it L’Oeuf. A promenade lined with horse chestnuts led away from one end. The trees had ripened and changed colour, and that too, the spectacular intensity of a northern autumn, was new. On weekends, old people sat on benches under the astonishing trees. Small children rode their tricycles carefully into each other. One Sunday there were sideshows. I watched a man aiming rope rings at the necks of dazed, tethered geese. It struck me as a sight from another century, something Flaubert would have seen.

Nîmes was only half an hour away by train. I went there on a grey Sunday with a questing wind. There were Roman mosaics to inspect, and a Roman amphitheatre where bullfights were now held. The wall in the amphitheatre was just high enough to prevent someone leaping it to escape. That was something I didn’t notice at the time. My mind was busy with sums as I walked about the city under clouds of yellow leaves. My salary wasn’t generous, and I wasn’t used to budgeting by the month. Train fares were cheaper if bought in advance, so along with my ticket to Nîmes, I’d bought two returns to Paris. I had Australian friends there, and we planned to spend Christmas together as well as the three-day break coming up for Toussaint. There was a phrase I’d encountered in novels, un fin de mois difficile. It referred to running short of money at the end of a month – I knew that, but I felt the force of the expression for the first time when I added up my fares, the admission fees to the sites in Nîmes and the cost of the long cheese sandwich I’d bought for lunch.

Crusty flakes from the sandwich littered my coat as I walked the stern gravel paths of a park. If I were to sit on a bench, within minutes a man would sit beside me and ask my name. If I didn’t answer, he’d ask a different question or invite me to have a drink. He’d leave after a while, and almost at once another man would take his place. Men like that were familiar to me. They wandered around Montpellier as well, under the blazing wreckage of public trees. They were North Africans, formally dressed in pressed trousers and jackets that didn’t match. Their shoes had creases across the instep but had been polished until they gleamed. On Sundays, the French retreated to their villas and their families. The streets were left to foreigners who had nowhere to go. If I answered one of those men politely, he’d move up to sit with his thigh along mine.