On the Butte, it’s Christmas in a big way. There’s a fat Santa Claus sitting at the terrace of Chez Eugène, drinking café-crème and scaring the kids. The artists are out in force too, and there’s a little band of college students playing hymns and Christmas songs just outside the church. I’d arranged to meet Jean-Loup this morning, and Rosette wanted to see the Nativity (again), so I took her out for a little walk while Maman worked and Zozie went out to do some shopping.

Neither of them mentioned what happened last night, but they both looked OK this morning, so I guess Zozie must have sorted things out. Maman was wearing her red dress, the one that always makes her feel good, and she was talking about recipes, and everything sounded so cheerful and right—

Jean-Loup was waiting in Place du Tertre when I finally got there with Rosette. Everything takes time with Rosette – anorak, boots, hat and gloves – and it was nearly eleven by the time we got there. Jean-Loup had his camera – the big one with the special lens – and he was taking pictures of people going by: foreign tourists; children watching the Nativity; the fat Santa smoking a cigar—

‘Hey! It’s you!’ That was Jean-Louis with his sketch pad, trying to pick up a tourist girl. He chooses them for their handbags, you know – he has a sliding scale of tariffs, based entirely on the style of the bag – and he can always spot a fake.

‘Fakes never fork out,’ he says. ‘But show me a nice Louis Vuitton and I’m in.’

Jean-Loup laughed when I told him that. Rosette laughed too, though I don’t think she really understood. She likes Jean-Loup and his camera. Picture, she signs, when she sees him now. She means the digital camera, of course; she likes to pose for a photograph, and see it at once in the little box.

Then Jean-Loup suggested going down to the cemetery to see what was left of last night’s snow, so we went down the steps by the funicular and walked along to Rue Caulaincourt.

‘Can you see the cats, Rosette?’ I said as we looked down from the metal bridge into the cemetery. Someone must have been feeding them because there were a couple of dozen of them, sitting around the entrance, where the lower level of the cemetery leads to a big round flower bed with long, straight avenues of tombs branching out like compass-points.