I don’t doubt it; there’s no subterfuge in Thierry, no side. His favourites are the simple wrapped milk chocolate squares you can buy from any supermarket in the country. Thirty per cent cocoa solids; anything stronger and he sticks out his tongue like a little boy. But I do love his enthusiasm – and I envy him his plainness and his lack of guile. Perhaps my envy exceeds my love – but does it matter so very much?

We met him last year, when the roof sprang a leak. Most landlords would have sent a workman – if we were lucky – but Thierry has known Madame Poussin for years (an old friend of his mother’s, he said), and he fixed the roof himself, staying for hot chocolate and playing with Rosette.

Twelve months into our friendship now, and we have already become an old couple, with our favourite haunts and our comfortable routines, although Thierry has yet to stay the night. He thinks I’m a widow, and touchingly wants to ‘give me time’. But his desire is there, unvoiced and untested – and would it really be so bad?

He has broached the subject only once. A single oblique reference to his own mansion flat on Rue de la Croix, to which we have been invited many times and which longs, as he says, for a woman’s touch.

A woman’s touch. Such an old-fashioned phrase. But then, Thierry is the old-fashioned type. In spite of his love of gadgetry, his mobile phone and his surround-sound hi-fi, he remains loyal to old ideals; to a simpler time.

Simple. That’s it. Life with Thierry would be very simple. There would always be money for necessary things. The rent for the chocolaterie would always be paid. Anouk and Rosette would be cared for and safe. And if he loves them – and me – isn’t that enough?

Is it, Vianne? That’s my mother’s voice – sounding very like Roux these days. I remember a time when you wanted more.

As you did, Mother? I told her silently. Dragging your child from place to place, always, for ever on the run. Living – just – from hand to mouth, stealing, lying, conjuring; six weeks, three weeks, four days in a place and then move on; no home, no school, peddling dreams, shuffling cards to map our journeys, wearing seam-stretched hand-me-downs, like tailors too busy to mend our own clothes.

At least we knew what we were, Vianne.

It was a cheap comeback, and one I would have expected from her. Besides, I know what I am. Don’t I?