“You like freelancing? Not drawn to a more stable job?”

D’Arcy shook her head adamantly. “Not for me. I like being able to work where and when it suits me. I like doing a mix of different things. I like that I can say no if I want to.”

“Have you always been like that?” Curiosity flickered in his eyes and she saw herself as he might: flighty, unable to settle, drawn to the unconventional in a way that he, as a lawyer, hadn’t been.

“Pretty much. I did a couple of exchanges in high school, one to Italy, and one to France. I went to uni in Paris. The Maison Européenne de la Photographie offered me an assistant curatorship when I finished, which I loved, but I hated the black pencil skirts and sleek ponytails and the hush and the quiet and the seriousness. It wasn’t fun, and art should be fun. Like here; I can tell that, whoever the photographer is, she revels in life. Everything is thriving and luscious and gorgeous and you just want to wallow in it. There wasn’t a lot of wallowing at the Maison.”

She managed to extract a smile from him, which made her add, “This won’t mean anything to you but I just about mortgaged my apartment to Buly 1803 when I lived in Paris and there’s a whole tray of it in the bathroom upstairs. If that doesn’t call for some committed wallowing, I don’t know what does.”

“I know Buly. I bought an ex-girlfriend some things from there once. She hated them. Too old-fashioned, she said.”

D’Arcy raised an eyebrow. “I bet she wore pencil skirts and had a slicked-back ponytail, right?”

“She did, actually.”

“Well then.” D’Arcy sipped her wine with satisfaction.

“You say that like you’ve just proved an important scientific theory.”

“I have. Girls in pencil skirts have never learned to wallow. I’m sure your ex is a case in point.”

He laughed. “Before we start talking about my ex-girlfriends, let’s go back to where we started,” he said. “I’m not sure we can take the risk of an article about the chateau. But I’ll ask the photographer and let you know.”

“Okay,” D’Arcy said, before her head turned at the smell of more extraordinary food bearing down upon them.

Célie placed a platter of whole pan-roasted fish between them, the skin crisp and delicious, the smell of butter and lemon and rosemary wafting out. Another plate contained vegetables so imperfectly shaped and delightful that D’Arcy knew they’d come straight from the garden. “Oh, dorade,” she said, sniffing the fish. “Tell me this is a dorade.”

Célie smiled. “It is. I had a feeling you might like it.”

“I’d have liked to show children blue-water dorados, golden fish and fish that sing,” D’Arcy quoted.

“Rimbaud,” Josh said quizzically as Célie melted into the night.

“I had a Parisian literature student as a boyfriend for a few months when I was at uni. He rather fancied himself as Rimbaud. I think he just liked the lines about vomit and cheap wine whereas, for some reason, it was always those golden singing fish that I remembered. I’ve had a fondness for the dorade ever since, even though I know they’re different to the ones Rimbaud wrote about.”