Advent. Adventure. Both words suggest the coming of some extraordinary event. I’d never considered the similarity before; never celebrated the Christian calendar; never fasted, repented or confessed.

Almost never, anyway.

But when Anouk was little, we celebrated Yule: lit fires against the coming dark; made wreaths of holly and mistletoe; drank spiced cider and wassails and ate smoking-hot chestnuts from an open brazier.

Then Rosette was born, and things changed again. Gone were the wreaths of mistletoe, the candles and the frankincense. Nowadays we go to church and buy more presents than we can afford, and leave them under the plastic tree, and watch TV, and get anxious about the cooking. The Christmas lights may look like stars, but closer inspection shows them to be fake: heavy garlands of wires and cables fix them across the narrow streets. The magic has gone – and isn’t that what you wanted, Vianne? says that dry voice inside my head, the voice that sounds like my mother, like Roux, and now just a little like Zozie; who reminds me of the Vianne I was, and whose patience is a kind of reproach.

But this year again will be different. Thierry loves the traditional ways. The church, the goose, the chocolate log – a celebration, not only of the season, but of the seasons we have shared together, and will continue to share—

No magic, of course. Well, is that so bad? There’s comfort and safety and friendship – and love. Isn’t that enough for us? Haven’t we been down the other road? Brought up on folk-tales all my life, why do I find it so hard to believe in the happy-ever-after? Why is it, when I know where he leads, that I still dream of following the Pied Piper?

I sent Anouk and Rosette to bed. Then I went after Roux and Thierry. A small enough delay – three minutes, perhaps, or five at most – but as I stepped out into the still-crowded street I already half knew that Roux would be gone, vanished into the warren of Montmartre. All the same, I had to try. I started towards the Sacré-Coeur – and then among the groups of visitors and tourists I caught sight of Thierry’s familiar figure walking down towards Place Dalida, hands in pockets, head thrust forward like a fighting cock’s.

I held back, took a left up a cobbled street and into Place du Tertre. Still no sign of Roux. He was gone. Of course he was – why would he stay? – and yet I lingered at the edge of the square, shivering (I’d forgotten my coat) and listening to the sounds of night-time Montmartre: music from the clubs below the Butte, laughter, footsteps, children’s voices from the Nativity scene across the square, a busker playing the saxophone, fragments of talk snatched on the wind—