They had once been luxurious residences, but the neighbourhood had clearly fallen out of fashion. Façades were cracked, windows boarded and front gardens were pocket-sized jungles. To make matters even more depressing, the sky seemed to be darkening for a storm.

The last house in the street was Dormitory Raquel. Marc stepped up a front path with moss growing through cracks in the concrete and nervously approached the front door, on which hung a great list of rules: No credit, no pets, no Jews, no Senegalese, no gambling, no noise, no women, no singing, no smoking in bed and absolutely no refunds. Beneath this, the list was repeated in other languages for the benefit of Poles, Russians and Germans.

‘Hello?’ Marc said nervously as he pushed the front door open.

He jumped as a toilet cistern thundered in a small room to his left. The door opened and a bare-chested man emerged, followed by an appalling stench that didn’t mix well with Marc’s full stomach. He briefly glimpsed into the room and saw mould on the walls, a rusted cistern and a toilet that looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in decades.

‘Sorry,’ the man said, speaking bad French with a Russian accent. ‘Didn’t know you were waiting.’

Marc cleared his throat. ‘Do you work here? I was thinking about getting a bed.’

The man pointed at the ceiling. ‘Madame Raquel, she’s upstairs.’

As Marc moved deeper into the house, he was overwhelmed by the smell of cigarettes and old sweat. By the time he reached the top of the stairs he wanted to turn away and run out, but he was stunned as he looked into a dormitory and saw an elderly man lying naked on his bed. He had a wild beard in which chunks of his own vomit hung like Christmas decorations.

There were four beds crammed into the room and the sheets on each were stained yellow and singed with dozens of cigarette burns. The window was boarded over and the filthy linoleum floor was strewn with beer bottles and newspaper.

Marc was horrified; he hadn’t come to Paris to end up living in such squalor. At least at the orphanage the nuns made all the boys bathe and change clothes regularly. He was about to turn and run back down the stairs when a large woman that he took to be Madame Raquel emerged from a bedroom with a stern face.

‘Any more bother from you,’ she said, wagging her finger at a patron, ‘any more, and I’ll have my lads break every bone in your body and throw you out in the gutter where you belong.’ Then she turned to Marc. ‘Who are you looking for, kid?’

‘Erm, how much is a bed?’ he asked meekly.