“It is all over the news!” Nicole told Françoise when she called back. “Are you safe? Tell me where you are! I’ll come for you.”

We sheltered in the doorway of a fancy boutique on the rue de Rivoli and minutes later Nicole arrived. When she leapt out of the car and clutched Françoise to her, the tears in her eyes made me suddenly miss my dad, and I realised the news of what had happened had probably gone global already.

“I should call him in case he’s worried about me,” I told Nicole.

She gave me her phone – mine had been lost in the rush. “Of course. Let him know you are OK.”

There was such relief in my dad’s voice when he heard me over the phone. He’d been trying to call me too. “It’s all over the BBC,” he said. “They’re calling it a terror attack.”

He hadn’t realised, of course, just how close I had been at the time and when I told him I was actually at the Louvre when it happened – well, that was a big mistake!

“Maisie, I want you on the next flight out of there,” he said.

“Dad, that’s ridiculous!” I said. “I’m fine. I don’t want to come home.”

“Maisie …”

“Dad, please …”

All the way home in the car we fought about it. I could see why my dad was so worried, but like I said to him, terror attacks happen in London too! What surprised me when I was talking to him was how much I wanted to stay in Paris. Even though things had been tough at art school, it seemed like the wrong thing to leave now. What was keeping me here the most was Claude and Oscar. Reports on the attack were coming through non-stop on the news. They said the horse and the gendarme were both alive but in a serious condition. I kept thinking there must have been a way I could have helped them, somehow gone back to them after the van had struck. At the time, though, we’d been running for our lives, and after that …?

“You would never have got through the police cordon,” Nicole said. Which was probably true, but now it was all over, I knew I needed to see them. Except I didn’t know where to begin to find them.

“Leave that to me,” Nicole said. She made some calls, and by the time we were home again, Nicole’s team had tracked Oscar down to the local hospital on the Île de la Cité.

“They tell me he is stable, which is good news, but they have him in intensive care and he isn’t allowed visitors yet,” Nicole said.

“What about Claude?” I asked.

“Claude is back at the Célestins stables and the vets are with him now.”