‘Vous avez passé une bonne soirée?’ asks the cheery driver as I scan the streets for someone tall and beaky with dark hair. But all I see are a tangle of headlights, red tail lights and signage reflecting off the mirrored roads.

‘Oui,’ I say as I clench my jaw and sink back into the black leather seat and reach into my bag for my phone. The driver’s hand finds its way to the volume knob and he turns it up. ‘Bette Davis Eyes’. The whole of Paris seems to have an ongoing love affair with easy listening, as though everyone got together and decided nothing culturally valuable was going to happen on the music scene after 1995.

‘Aimez-vous la musique?’ asks the driver, smiling into his rearview mirror. He’s trying to be polite. To get a good rating. But I don’t want to chat, especially not in French, so I smile and nod and look down at my phone. I pull the business card from my pocket and take a picture of it.

The driver’s eyes move back to the road. He’s tapping along to the music on the steering wheel as I send the picture of that business card and the photographs I took on Monday on the metro to Camilla with one line of text: Is this the guy?

It’s just after 11 pm, which means it’s 10 pm in London; she might still be up.

The rain pelts down on the metal roof, the easy listening station continues to play and I rest my head back and close my eyes. A highlight reel from the past few days flickers on the back of my eyelids: Better luck next time, princess, Sleeping Beauty’s castle, Camilla in that gold sequined dress, the tall creepy guy, the metro, him walking towards me, his face… A flicker of recognition, a feeling of knowing in my chest… I know him. I’ve seen him. His face in a crowd… then nothing.

We take a corner and my eyes flick open. We turn left down Rue de Sèvres and head past the real estate agent, the pharmacy and Franprix. Then right, left and, before I know it, we’re at my street and my pulse is thudding in my ears. I scan the streets outside but it’s almost empty. I live on a one-way street so I’ll have to walk the final few metres alone.

‘This is okay,’ I say. ‘Ici.’

The driver pulls to a stop, I take a deep breath, say ‘Merci’, get out and run through the rain to my big wooden gate, my hand trembling as I punch in the code.