A simple wedding, Maman says. A registry office, no priest, no church. But we know better. He’ll get his way. The whole hog, with Rosette and me in matching frocks. It’s going to be terrible.

I said so to Zozie, and she pulled a face and said each to his own, which was a laugh, really, because no one in their right mind could imagine that those two could ever be really in love.

Well, maybe he does. What does he know? He came round again last night and took us out – not to P’tit Pinson, this time, but to an expensive place on the river, where we could see the boats go by. I wore a dress, and he said I looked very nice, but I ought to have brushed my hair, and Zozie looked after Rosette at the shop, because Thierry said it wasn’t a suitable place for a small child (though we all knew that wasn’t the real reason).

Maman was wearing the ring he’d given her. A great, fat, hateful diamond, perched on her hand like a shiny bug. She doesn’t wear it in the shop (it gets in the way of everything), and last night she kept playing with it, twisting it round and round on her finger, as if it felt uncomfortable.

Getting used to it yet? he says. As if we could ever get used to that, or to him, or to the way he treats us, like spoilt children, to be bought and bribed. And he gave Maman a mobile phone, just to keep in touch, he said – I can’t believe you’ve never had one before – and afterwards we had champagne (which I hate) and oysters (which I also hate), and a chocolate soufflé ice cream, which was quite nice, but not as nice as the ones Maman used to make, as well as being very, very small.

And Thierry laughed a lot (at least, at first), and called me jeune fille, and talked about the chocolaterie. Turns out he’s going to London again, and this time he wanted Maman to go with him, but she was too busy, she said, and maybe after the Christmas rush.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘I thought you said business was slow.’

‘I’m trying something new,’ said Maman, and told him about the new line of truffles she was planning, and how Zozie was helping out for a while, and how she was bringing her old things out of storage. She talked about it for a long time, and her face was pink, the way it gets when she’s really into something, and the more she talked, the quieter Thierry got, and the less he laughed, so that finally she stopped talking and looked a bit embarrassed.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to hear all this.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ said Thierry. ‘And this was Zozie’s idea, was it?’ He didn’t sound too pleased about it.