It was Alexandre. He was standing behind me in the corridor dressed in his police uniform, the navy jodhpurs and long black boots with a tight navy polo shirt.

“You’re looking for Claude, yes?” he asked me. “He is out on duty at the moment, him and Oscar. Their shift finishes in half an hour – wait for them in the gardens if you want.”

“Can I wait here?” I asked.

“Sure,” Alexandre said. “You know, if you wanted to make yourself useful, you could even muck out his stall?”

“I don’t know how,” I said. When he looked oddly at me, I added, “I’m from Brixton.” Which I thought explained it.

“Brixton?” Alexandre looked puzzled, as though he didn’t know what I was talking about. “I’m not suggesting you do brain surgery.” Alexandre shrugged. “You get a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow. You pick up the dung. That’s all there is to it. You don’t need an art school education for this, I don’t think.”

Oscar must have told him about me being at art school. We’d talked about why I was in Paris the other day. I had hung around in the courtyard after the show was over and Oscar had let me help as he had unsaddled Claude. We’d talked a lot that day.

“It’s good for me to talk with you,” Oscar had said. “I like to practise my English.”

“Your English is already good,” I’d said. I’d noticed though that sometimes he would say strange words like, “ten-four” and “Roger that.”

“I grew up watching lots of American cop shows when I was a kid.” Oscar smiled. “So I speak American a bit.”

We talked then about how Oscar had grown up always wanting to be a policeman. “I was an ordinary police officer, you know?” he said. “Then I was handpicked for the Célestins.”

I had asked Nicole about the Célestins. She said they were a little like the British mounted police, but also like the Queen’s Guard who rode in parades in London. I thought it would be amazing, to have a job riding horses, and I’d assumed Oscar had been a rider before he came here, but he wasn’t.

“I had never been a rider, but when I became a policeman I found it so dull. I thought it would be exciting – catching robbers, car chases. It turns out being a gendarme in the French police is mostly paperwork. Very boring. So I applied to the Célestins. They taught me to ride.”

“I think I’d like your job,” I said, “riding horses all day for work.”

“It’s pretty good,” Oscar agreed. He stroked Claude’s muzzle. “To be paid money to be with your best friend on the streets of Paris every day. There are worse jobs.”