I needed a day to steady my nerves, then rang the number he had given me. As soon as I said ‘Bonjour,’ she replied: ‘Bonjour Karen.’ A strange conversation, between two people who were now inextricably linked, and who in a way knew a great deal about the other person – me from her letter, she from my media appearances – but who were nevertheless completely unknown to one another. After some awkward introductory formalities, we spent the rest of the conversation arranging where we would meet the following week. I passed the intervening time in a state of high anxiety. I know she did too.

I arrived several hours early for the ferry to France and would have had time to climb the white cliffs of Dover three times, had my overnight bag not been so heavy. The crossing was uneventful and I arrived at my little hotel without incident. I went for a walk around the town centre to calm my nerves and then retired to my dingy room to watch rubbishy French television, trying not to notice – or touch – the ominous stains on the blanket and carpets that recalled previous meals or worse, previous sexual encounters. When I pulled back the sheets on the bed, something with too many legs half-scuttled, half-hopped away under the pillow. I did not sleep well.

The next morning I took my breakfast and sat myself in the bar as instructed. I had a view across the road, and as the hour of our appointment drew near I began nervously to watch the women approaching. Would she come alone, or with her companion? Was this lumpy peasant woman carrying bags of shopping my date? Or this stolid stony-faced older couple marching glumly down the road, looking neither to left nor right?

In fact she approached from a different angle, and I didn’t see her until she was inside the bar, her companion behind her. She hesitated a moment, framed in the doorway, and we looked at one another in silence before she came forward. She was very pretty, slim and elegant, with a delicate face and good cheekbones, of medium height and wearing white linen trousers with a loose flowing top. Her hair was dark brown and she wore it in a loose bob. I didn’t try to guess her age at that point and though she later told me she was sixty, she looked much younger. As she stood at the door her whole body and bearing seemed to radiate tension and worry. We immediately recognized one another, but it was not difficult: she had seen me on the television and I was waiting for someone to approach me in a quiet bar in a provincial French town at ten in the morning. I drew a shaky breath as she approached my table, both of us smiling nervously. Behind her, her compagnon hovered protectively, a compact man with closely cropped grey hair and a no-nonsense handshake.