‘You can’t do everything on your own.’ He was looking slightly annoyed now; shoulders hunched, hands jammed into his coat pockets.

‘I know that. I’ll find someone.’

Once more I glanced at Zozie, busy now with two platters of food in each hand, joking with the belote players at the back of the room. She looks so very much at ease, so independent, so very much herself as she hands out the plates, collects the glasses, fends off wandering hands with a laughing comment and a pretend-slap.

Why, I was like that, I told myself. That was me, ten years ago.

Well, not even that, I thought, because surely Zozie could not be so much younger than me, but so much easier in her own skin, more thoroughly Zozie than I was ever Vianne.

Who is Zozie? I ask myself. Those eyes see much further than dishes to be washed, or a banknote folded under the rim of a plate. Blue eyes are easier to read, and yet the trick of the trade that has served me so often – if not so well – along the years, for some reason fails to work at all with her. Some people are like that, I tell myself. But dark or light, soft-centred or brittle, bitterest orange or rose cream or Manon blanc or vanilla truffle, I have no idea whether she even likes chocolate at all, still less her favourite.

So – why is it I think that she knows mine?

I looked back at Thierry, to find that he was watching her too.

‘You can’t afford to hire any help. You’re barely making ends meet as it is.’

Once more, I felt a flash of annoyance. Who does he think he is? I thought. As if I’d never managed alone, as if I were a child playing shop with my friends. Certainly, business in the chocolaterie has not been good over the past few months. But the rent is paid till the New Year, and surely we can turn it around. Christmas is coming, and with luck—

‘Yanne, perhaps we need to talk.’ The smile had gone, and now I could see the businessman in his face; the man who had started out at fourteen with his father to renovate a single derelict flat near Gare du Nord, and had become one of the most successful property dealers in Paris. ‘I know it’s hard. But really, it doesn’t have to be. There’s a solution to everything. I know you were devoted to Madame Poussin – you helped her a lot, and I appreciate that—’

He thinks that’s true. Perhaps it was; but I’m also aware that I used her, too, as I used my imagined widowhood, as an excuse to delay the inevitable; the terrible point of no return—

‘But perhaps there’s a way forward from here.’

‘Way forward?’ I said.