Clotilde gave him a smile that he did not return. She was putting eye-liner on her eyes to give them a dark oriental depth, slightly Gothic, perhaps, even if she refused to admit it, when two teenagers came in behind her.

With mud-encrusted trainers on their feet and cycling helmets in their hands, fluorescent protectors on their knees and elbows, they made straight for the toilets and came out a few moments later. They stared with disgust at the muddy trails they had left across the wet tiles. The taller of the two stopped, as if faced with impassable quicksand, then turned towards Orsu.

‘It’s filthy!’

The other one stepped forward carefully so as not to slip, avoiding the damp traces of soil and therefore dirtying another part of the floor.

‘You’re disgusting, Hagrid. Why don’t you do the bogs first thing in the morning, or at night, when no one’s around?’

The other one backed him up. He was thirteen at most, with a branded pair of underpants peeping out above his tight cycling shorts.

‘That’s right, Hagrid, that’s how it works. At school, at my dad’s office, even on the street. Taking the bins out, cleaning up shit, you do that when people are asleep or away.’

The smaller one, twelve years old tops and wearing an XXL Waikiki T-shirt that fell past his bottom, added:

‘That’s how you do the job, Hagrid. It’s about service, respecting your customer, having a sense of what the tourist wants. You see, Hagrid, the bogs have to be spanking clean and you’ve got to be invisible. The shit has to disappear as if by magic. We shouldn’t even know you exist.’

Orsu opened frightened eyes. Clotilde saw no hatred in them, only fear. Fear of these two little idiots, of what they might say, what they might report back. Perhaps even the fear of disappointing them.

Clotilde hesitated. In her younger days she would have gone in with her head lowered.

She gauged her reaction time at three seconds before turning towards the taller one. Three seconds. Before launching off she reflected that she hadn’t really aged that much.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Umm … Why?’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Cédric.’

‘Cédric what?’

‘Cédric Fournier.’

‘And you?’

‘Maxime. Maxime Chantrelle.’

‘OK, well we’ll see about this later.’

‘You’ll see about what, miss?’

‘Whether I’m going to put in a complaint.’

The two boys looked at each other uncomprehendingly. Report this guy for not using the mop properly? That was crazy. They didn’t want to go that far.

‘Whether I’m going to put in a complaint about the harassment of an employee who is going about his duties, insults that constitute,’ here she rested her eyes on Orsu’s stiff arm, ‘the abuse of authority towards a third party.’

‘Are you serious, miss?’