Apart from the twenty-minute coffee stop and the extensive (and surprisingly loud) bitchfest with another colleague over by the printer, I think to myself.

‘You’re obviously being very productive.’ I smile at her, still willing to make an effort to build a relationship nonetheless. ‘I’m glad to have such a dedicated project analyst on the team.’

‘I’m a senior analyst,’ she corrects me in her sweet but poisonous tone.

‘Right, of course. My apologies. Not yet fully familiar with the project structure.’

‘Shall we?’ Emmanuel gestures towards the lifts, giving me a subtle ‘don’t worry about it at all’ look.

The three of us take the lift down to the ground floor, then wander across the plaza in the sunshine. It’s remarkably warm for September but I’m unsure whether this is normal now I’m living that bit further south.

‘I love these water features,’ I comment, as we make our way along the landscaped path between them. ‘Reminds me of holidays spent in France when I was young.’

‘You like France?’ Danielle’s ears prick up. ‘Me too. My family spent most of our summers there.’

‘Really? We stayed on the campsites. Keycamp, Eurocamp, that kind of thing. We visited so many different parts of France. It was amazing freedom as a kid. Did you do the same?’

Danielle raises an eyebrow. ‘No. We stayed in a villa.’

‘Ah, right.’ I nod, understanding. ‘My family considered hiring a gîte one year, but we just loved the outdoor lifestyle of the campsites too much.’

As I say this, a memory of happier times spent with my family pops into my head. A time when my parents were still together. Before my mother became so bitter and judgemental following the death of her brother and drove my dad to divorce – and then a stroke ripped him from our lives altogether.

‘Yeah… we didn’t hire villas, we owned one.’ Danielle tries to sound nonchalant but her face is leaking an unapologetic air of superiority. ‘In St Tropez. We went twice a year.’

I let out an impressed whistle, keen to keep Danielle talking to understand more about her. ‘Gosh, lucky you. That pales my holidays into complete insignificance. Rubbing shoulders with celebrities, were you?’ This last statement is intended as a joke.

‘There were a few around that my pops knew.’ She shrugs. ‘So, are you a French speaker then, Alex? Parlez-vous français?’

She’s challenging me. But I’m not going to engage in a game of one-upping. I’m happy for the mine-is-bigger-than-yours behaviour to remain entirely one-sided.

‘Oh… no. My French is terrible.’

Danielle seems satisfied with my response. I can tell that, in her head, it’s now one–nil to her.

We reach Thai Paradise, a culinary sanctuary of peace and tranquillity with its babbling water feature just inside the entrance, Thai-inspired interior decoration, and zen-like woodwind tones floating down from the wall-mounted speakers. Danielle struts ahead of us, keen to join her teammates at the table, and quite possibly to see if she can assemble the front line her way ahead of my arrival. Emmanuel hangs back and gives me a curious look.