For a moment he disappears. Then there’s a flicker of flame from a match. A light comes on. A candle is lit. The flame moves, and the boat comes to life as candles burn on the deck, on the roof, on sills and ledges from stem to stern. Dozens – maybe hundreds – of them, glowing in jam-jars, on saucers, shining out from tin cans and flower pots until Roux’s boat is lit up like a birthday cake, and we can see what we missed before: the awning, the window, the sign on the roof . . .

He waves to us extravagantly, signalling for us to approach. Anouk does not run, but holds my hand, and I can feel her trembling. I’m barely surprised to see Pantoufle in the shadows at our feet, and isn’t there something else as well, some long-tailed and loping thing that matches him naughtily, step for step?

‘Do you like it?’ says Roux.

For a moment, the candles themselves are enough; a small miracle reflected in a thousand little points of light across the quiet waterway. Rosette’s eyes are filled with them, and Anouk, watching with my hand in hers, lets out a long and languorous breath.

Michèle says: ‘It’s beautiful.’

And so it is. But more than that—

‘It’s a chocolaterie, isn’t it?’

And, of course, I can see it is. From the sign (still blank) above the door to the little display window lined with nightlights, I can see what it’s meant to be. I cannot begin to guess how long it took him to create this little miracle – how much time and work and love such a project must demand—

He’s watching me with his hands in his pockets. There’s a trace of anxiety in his eyes.

‘I bought it as wreck,’ he says. ‘Dried it out and fixed it up. Been working on it ever since. Paid for it over nearly four years. But I always thought that maybe one day—’

My mouth on his stops him mid-phrase. He smells of paint and gunpowder smoke. And all around us the candles are lit, and Paris is luminous under the snow, and the last unofficial fireworks are dying away beyond Place de la Bastille, and—

‘Meh. You two. Get a room,’ says Anouk.

Neither of us has breath to reply.

It’s quiet now under Pont Morland as we lie watching the candles burn out. Michèle is asleep in one bunk, and Rosette and Anouk are sharing another, with Anouk’s red cloak flung over them both, and Pantoufle and Bam standing guard in case of evil dreams.

Above us, in our own room, the glass roof shows us a sky sprawling and apocalyptic with stars. In the distance, the sound of traffic from Place de la Bastille might almost be the sound of surf on a lonely beach.