I trusted her completely with my life story, as her own experiences mirrored those of my family. She asked a few questions about my job as a translator and we discovered that we had something unexpected in common, namely we both earned a living by dealing exclusively with Arabs. Her long-term dream was to break into the Maghreb market with her spare auto parts. Given that I spoke the language and had already proven myself as a business woman, she predicted a glowing relationship ahead. In a gesture of friendship, I gave her my father’s weapon, after making her promise not to use it herself but to give it to a bodyguard to protect her friends and family at their next celebration. Finally, we went down to the basement to move what remained of my stock into an old boiler room; that’s to say, exactly 463 kilos of hash, taking into account the samples I had distributed.

“What you do with that?”

“I don’t know. You don’t know anybody who might be interested? I don’t need it anymore; I have enough money for my small family.”

“Drugs, in China, death penalty. Just bring problem.”

“I’ll get rid of it, then.”

With the money from the sale of my apartment to the Fò family, I bought a second one on Rue Monge in the same building as the Léger’s, which I moved into. So one morning in June, I left Belleville.

Philippe helped me pack my boxes and carry them down to the moving van.

When almost everything had been loaded up, and we were utterly dead on our feet, I made him a coffee. We sat on the remaining two boxes with DNA at our feet and I told him, with a hint of nostalgia, about the twenty-six years which had unfolded within those four walls. Suddenly he stood up to have a look through my cupboards.

“If you’re looking for spoons, I’ve packed everything, they’re all gone.”

“I’m hungry. I just feel like a little something to snack on.”

And he opened a cupboard where I had forgotten about fifteen or so packets of Chamonix Oranges.

I paled.

He opened one up happily and held it out to me.

“I guess you must really like these!”

“I was supposed to make an orange-flavoured tiramisu one day for one of my daughter’s parties and I never got round to it, so I was stuck with all of those. I’ve been working my way through them one packet at a time before they go out of date.”

He drank his coffee in silence, and I saw his face change.

I carried on as if nothing had happened.

“I’ve always wondered who eats Chamonix Oranges. They’re pretty disgusting as cakes go,” he said, quietly.