I thank her and leave, finding a wall to sit on and eat my macaroon. I don’t have Daniel Buchs’ address because he wasn’t among the eighty-nine listed in the online phone book. I debate just emailing him and asking him to meet me, but something’s holding me back. I’d rather just find out a bit about him, and then see.

The guesthouse is a large old chalet half a minute’s walk from the bakery. I push open the door and love it immediately for its Swissness. There are hearts carved into the backs of wooden chairs, gingham tablecloths and etchings of mountain scenery on the walls. Though I hardly saw any people outside, in here it’s busy with diners finishing Sunday lunch, the air pungent with the rich smell of hot cheese.

‘Grüessech.’ A youngish woman with an apron around her waist approaches me.

I mumble my best approximation of the word back. ‘Is it possible to speak to Linda Keller, please?’

‘She is in the kitchen. It’s lunchtime. Busy.’ She gestures around the restaurant as though I might not have noticed.

‘I can wait,’ I say. ‘Can I sit over there?’

‘You want to order something?’

I ask for a beer and take a seat at the bar. I feel momentarily self-conscious to be sitting here on my own, but no one else in the restaurant seems to give me a second glance. Soon I relax into the comforting hum of their laughter and chatter, which, though I don’t understand a word, seems universal – the sound of friendship, happiness, home. It’s familiar, and yet it’s odd to find this familiarity when I’m waiting for a stranger in a small village in rural Switzerland, so far away from everything I call home – or used to, at least.

I don’t know where home is anymore.

Not the Greenwich house – that couldn’t be home without Mum in it, and now Dad’s sold up anyway and moved to Chichester. And not the Peckham flat, the place Patrick and I fashioned for ourselves, a place so full of hope for the future when we moved in. That stopped being home after Patrick left. Now, home isn’t a place, but a collection of small things: the smell of flowers in Maggie’s garden, the passenger seat of Dad’s car, an old stuffed toy donkey Mum bought me as a baby, currently locked away from my tenant in a wardrobe with my most precious things back in the flat in Peckham. Familiar things that cumulatively bring me some comfort, but don’t quite make a whole.

Half an hour later there’s still no Linda Keller and I’ve started a second beer. I signal to the waitress and ask if Linda has time to see me now. She nods. ‘I will ask.’