Maria and Jan had lapsed into silence. To Laure’s surprise, Maria slid her hand into hers. Laure stroked her fingers. ‘Not long now,’ she said.

Dressed in black from head to foot with her hair hidden by a bandeau, a girl drew a curtain across the door and the lights dimmed. Backstage, a couple of recorders struck up with a folk tune. Maria’s fingers clenched in Laure’s.

The stage curtains winched back, revealing a black backdrop lit by a single overhead light. The children in the audience rustled like wheat in the wind.

After a few minutes, Laure realized that she was watching a version of Sleeping Beauty. In this one, the Good Fairy was dressed in dungarees and a peasant scarf. The Bad Fairy was male, wore a pinstriped suit and a papier mâché bowler hat.

Jan giggled at the sight. ‘Funny.’

As the story developed, Laure spotted an emerging agenda. The king and queen were demanding aristocrats, the courtiers were stupid and lazy, and Princess Aurore was spoilt and treated her nurse shockingly. Still, her scream when she pricked her finger was very convincing. Convicted of neglect, her parents were led off to prison before the courtiers fell asleep.

If the story had veered from the traditional, the puppetry was superb. After her initial resistance to having the story so altered, Laure gave in and laughed and gasped aloud with the best of them.

Having learnt her lesson, she made sure the children visited the lavatory in the interval. When they returned, their original seats had been taken and the only spaces left were beside the open door leading outside. Before she could stop him, Jan bolted through it and she followed.

The garden, such as it was, was a modest rectangle wedged between larger ones on either side. It admitted only partial sunlight but someone with green fingers tended it. Plants had been trained up the wall. Scarlet pelargoniums and ornamental grasses had been planted in a pair of rusting dustbins. A clematis grew in and out of the railing dividing the rectangle from the neighbouring garden. At its centre was a stone sun-dial, a beautiful object which looked antique, set on a pillar carved with stone flowers. The bench ranged against the back wall had been colonized by a male figure perched on its arm, smoking a cigarette.

Laure barely registered him as she was busy cajoling Jan back into his seat. When the lights had dimmed, however, he returned inside – and, then, she did sit up and take notice. Wearing a striped linen waistcoat with bone buttons that had seen better days, he was young, shambolic, sexy.

He indicated the seat next to her. ‘OK?’

She nodded and turned away to deal with Jan who was poking his sister. ‘Stop it.’ In her confusion, she had lapsed into English and she noticed that the stranger gave a sharp look. She corrected herself. ‘Arrête.’