‘I’ve hardly seen you all this week.’ His voice carries; I could hear it quite clearly from the front of the shop. Vianne’s is less easy to hear; a murmur of something like protest, perhaps. The sound of a scuffle. His giant laughter. ‘Come on. One kiss. I’ve missed you, Yanne.’

That murmur again, her voice rising. ‘Thierry, be careful. The chocolates—’

I hid a smile. The old goat. Getting frisky, is he? Well, that doesn’t surprise me at all. That chivalrous façade may have fooled Vianne, but men, like dogs, are predictable, Thierry le Tresset more than most. Beneath his apparent self-confidence, Thierry is deeply insecure, and the arrival of Roux has made him more so. He has become territorial, both at Rue de la Croix, where his hold on Roux gives him a strange, unacknowledged thrill, and here at Le Rocher de Montmartre.

I heard Vianne’s voice faintly through the door. ‘Thierry, please. This isn’t the time.’

Meanwhile Anouk was listening. Her face showed no expression at all, but her colours gleamed. I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. Instead she glanced at the door and made a little beckoning movement with her fingers. Anyone else would have missed it. She might not even have known she was making it. But at the same moment, a draught seemed to catch at the kitchen door and it swung open sharply, slamming against the painted wall.

A small interruption, but it was enough. I caught a flash of annoyance from Thierry’s colours, a kind of relief from Vianne herself. Of course this impatience is new to her; she is so used to thinking of him as an avuncular figure: dependable; safe, if a little dull. His new possessiveness is slightly overwhelming, and for the first time she is dimly aware of a feeling, not just of alarm, but of distaste.

It’s all because of Roux, she thinks. All her doubts will leave with him. But for now the uncertainty makes her nervous, unreasonable. She kisses Thierry on the mouth – guilt is sea-green, in the language of colours – and gives him a smile that is over-bright.

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ she says.

With two fingers of her right hand, Anouk makes a tiny gesture of dismissal.

Opposite, on her little chair, Rosette is watching her, bright-eyed. She copies the sign – tsk-tsk, begone! – and Thierry slaps a hand to the back of his neck, as if an insect has stung him there. The wind-chimes ring—

‘I have to go.’

Indeed he does; clumsy in his big overcoat, he almost trips as he opens the door. Anouk’s hand is in her pocket now, where she keeps his peg-doll safe. She pulls it out and goes to the display window, where she places it carefully outside the house.

‘Bye, Thierry,’ says Anouk.

Rosette signs with her fingers. Bye-bye.

The door slams shut. The children smile.