In Montpellier a flea market was held every Sunday under the eighteenth-century aqueduct that still supplied the city’s fountains. I examined rust-spotted lawn nighties there, varnish-dim paintings, cracked faïence plates. Much of this trash was priced like treasure, but I kept going back. Madame Bisset had lent me bed linen, inherited from her grandmother, to spare me the expense of buying my own. The sheets were monogrammed and weighty, fit for a shroud, and they took two hours to dry. I’d feed coin after coin into a machine in the laundromat and head to the market over the road.

Sometimes a procession of dark blue vans tore up to the aqueduct. Gendarmes would swarm out, station themselves around the market and set about checking people’s papers. I was always asked for ID, but as soon as I showed my passport, I was waved on. Australians were not ang-ter-es-sung. It always ended the same way, with a group of North African men herded into a van. I began to see why they put such effort into looking respectable. The French can overlook a whole heap of things if you’ve taken trouble with your shoes.

In a cafe near my apartment, a hand-tinted photograph of a port hung on a wall. It was labelled ‘Algiers, 1938’. The owner noticed me looking at it and said, ‘The bay was so blue.’ He said, ‘Bloody Arabs!’ and went on polishing a glass. I thought of him, in the park in Nîmes, and I thought of the vans. Then I swore at the man who hissed when I paused to look at a statue. We were the same colour, the North Africans and I, and that counted for a lot, but it didn’t count enough.

Deb told me, ‘I keep a big hatpin handy. Anyone tries anything, I let him have it.’ She offered to procure me a pin. Deb was in my debt. She’d taken Madame Bisset’s room. When I asked how she planned to get around after the buses stopped, Deb said that she’d rented a moped. I was stunned by her efficiency and common sense. I pictured her speeding along boulevards, the wind slapping her pretty, blue face. I didn’t know how to manage these things. When my family emigrated it felt as if we’d been stood on our heads. Events and their meanings came at us from new angles. Seven years had passed, but the three of us were still trying to manage that.