At two-thirty I finally managed to get her to sleep, closing the door between us and lying down on my sagging bed. Not quite a double bed, though too large for a single one, it was already old when we moved in, and the random percussion of its broken springs has been the cause of many a sleepless night. Tonight it was an orchestra, and at just after five I gave up on sleep and went downstairs to make coffee.

Outside, it was raining; a fat, heavy rain that sluiced down the alleyway and spouted exuberantly from the guttering. I picked up a blanket that had been lying on the stairs and took it, with my coffee, into the front of the shop. Then I sat down in one of Zozie’s armchairs (so much more comfortable than the ones upstairs), and, with only the soft yellow light from the kitchen filtering out through the half-closed door, I curled up and waited for morning to come.

I must have dozed off – a sound awoke me. It was Anouk, barefoot in her red-and-blue checked pyjamas, a blurry shimmer at her heels that could only be Pantoufle. I have noticed over the past few years that although by day Pantoufle can disappear for weeks, and sometimes months on end, he is a stronger and more persistent presence at night. As I suppose he has to be; all children are afraid of the dark. Anouk came over, slid under the blanket and curled up against me with her hair in my face and her cold feet tucked up behind my knees, as she used to when she was much younger, in the days when things were simple.

‘I couldn’t sleep. The ceiling drips.’

Ah, yes. I’d forgotten. There’s a leak in the roof, which no one so far has quite managed to fix. That’s the problem with these old buildings. However much work is done on them, there’s always something new to address: a rotten window-frame; a broken gutter; woodworm in the joist; a cracked slate. And though Thierry has always been generous, I don’t like to ask him too often for help. It’s nonsense, I know; but I don’t like to ask.

‘I was thinking about our party,’ she said. ‘Does Thierry really have to come? You know he’ll ruin everything.’

I gave a sigh. ‘Oh, please. Not now.’ Anouk’s violent enthusiasms usually amuse me, but not at six in the morning.

‘Go on, Maman,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t we just not invite him this time?’

‘We’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘You’ll see.’ I was quite aware that it wasn’t an answer, and Anouk shifted restlessly, pulling the blanket over her head. She smelt of vanilla and lavender and the faint, sheepy scent of her tangled hair, grown coarser over the past four years, like uncarded wild wool.