‘Exactly. We want them to get a good start in life. English is so important.’

I think of my basic French, which never got past ‘Où est la gare’ and ‘Je voudrais un café s’il vous plaît’.

A tune echoes in the back of my mind: Mum, at her laptop, humming a French song to herself, and I feel the familiar ache.

A key turns in the lock and I hear a gabble of voices in French chatter their way down the corridor and into the living room.

‘Elle est arrivée, elle est arrivée!’ The girl is a miniature version of her mother. Dark hair in a long plait down her back. Deep brown eyes. Skinny. Picture-pretty.

‘En anglais,’ Julia says.

‘Hello,’ the girl says to me. ‘My name is Léa.’ I say hello back and suppress the thought that always comes to me when I meet someone else’s kids: if I’d had a daughter, would she have looked like me?

‘And this is our son, Luca.’ Julia nods to a little boy who comes up to stand shyly behind Léa.

‘How do you do, Luca?’ I say, and he giggles and turns away from me, burrowing his face into the legs of a tall man who enters the room after the children. They exchange a few words in French before the man steps round his son and onto the terrace to shake my hand. ‘Don’t worry about him, he’s always shy with new people. I’m Michel. Bienvenue. Good to meet you.’

‘And you.’ He looks a bit older than Julia and yet he has the same poised, unflustered demeanour. Quite a feat after spending a day at the zoo with two under sevens.

‘I’m glad you made it. Was the flight okay? I heard there were some delays on the trains today.’

‘Fine, thanks. I didn’t have any problems. Doesn’t transport here always run on time?’

‘That’s a myth,’ Michel says. He bends down to kiss Julia, putting his left hand on her shoulder. She reaches up and squeezes his hand and I see their wedding rings – matching gold bands. My ring finger got so used to being occupied that sometimes I think I’m still wearing it, the way amputees get phantom pains after they no longer have the limb.

‘How would you know, you never take the train! He drives to work, while I get the train.’ Julia rolls her eyes. ‘But it’s true, they are late sometimes.’

Their ease with each other is so familiar. That was Patrick and me, once, before everything.

‘Shall we open a bottle?’ Julia flashes Michel a smile. He nods, then squeezes himself through the kids who are still staring at me from the terrace doors.

‘You like animals?’ Léa asks in precise but heavily accented English.

‘Very much.’

Léa claps her hands. ‘We go to the zoo again with you?’