‘Can’t get enough of these bad boys,’ he said. ‘Just keep ’em coming, Yanne – OK?’

I couldn’t help smiling at his exuberance. They sat at a table in the front of the shop. She had mocha, and he had hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows, while Zozie and I remained discreetly aloof in the back kitchen – unless a customer came in – and Rosette pulled out her drawing pad and began to draw pictures of monkeys, long-tailed and grinning, in every colour in the box.

‘Hey, that’s good,’ said Nico, as Rosette handed him a picture of a fat purple monkey eating a coconut. ‘I guess you must like monkeys, eh?’

He did a monkey face for Rosette, who gave a crow of laughter and signed – Again! She’s laughing more often. I’ve noticed that. At Nico, at me, at Anouk, at Zozie – perhaps, next time Thierry calls, she will start to connect with him a little more.

Alice laughed too. Rosette likes her best, perhaps because she is so small, almost a child herself in her short print dress and pale-blue coat. Perhaps because she so rarely speaks; even with Nico, who talks enough for the both of them.

‘That monkey looks like Nico,’ she said. With adults her voice is wispy and reluctant. With Rosette, she has a different tone. Her voice is rich and comical, and Rosette responds with a brilliant smile.

So Rosette drew monkeys for all of us. Zozie’s is wearing bright-red mittens on all four hands. Alice’s monkey is electric blue, with a tiny body and a ridiculously long and curly tail. Mine is embarrassed, hiding its furry face in its hands. She has a knack, no doubt about it: her drawings are crude, but oddly alive; and she manages to convey facial expressions with only a couple of strokes of the pen.

We were still laughing when Madame Luzeron came in with her little fluffy peach-coloured dog. Madame Luzeron dresses well, in grey twinsets that hide her expanding waist, and well-cut coats in shades of charcoal and black. She lives in one of the big stucco-fronted houses behind the park; goes to Mass every day, to the hairdresser’s every other day – except on Thursdays, when she goes to the cemetery by way of our shop. She might be as young as sixty, but her hands are wrung with arthritis and her thin face is chalky with concealer.

‘Three rum truffles, in a box.’

Madame Luzeron never says ‘please’. That would be too bourgeois, perhaps. Instead she peered at Fat Nico, Alice, the empty cups and the monkeys. An over-plucked eyebrow went up.

‘I see you’ve – redecorated.’ The slightest of pauses before that last word throws doubt on the wisdom of such a move.