‘Waking up both your mother and Max?’

‘Yup.’ Bella was laughing again now. ‘Poor Mum. We must have been a bloody nightmare.’

‘On the other hand, you could say she brought it on herself, to take two children— how old were you?’

‘I was five and Max was seven.’

‘OK, then, two very young children to some fleapit in Montmartre.’

‘It wasn’t that bad. Character building. Mum did the best she could, which was bloody brilliant under the circumstances.’ Bella was always staunchly loyal to those she loved. ‘And she did prise the cockroach off my eyelashes with her fingernails.’

‘It was actually hanging off your eyelashes?’

‘That’s why I screamed, you bugger. I’m not that pathetic.’

‘I think I’m starting to realize that.’

They walked out of the park, meandering through grand Napoleonic boulevards and kicking up the first fallen leaves. Before long, they hit Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in all its bohemian, Art Nouveau splendour.

‘Oooh, Les Deux Magots,’ said Bella. ‘Perfect timing. I was just starting to feel a bit thirsty. Time for a pit stop?’

Andy laughed.

‘We’re on holiday, we can do whatever we want.’

On such a lovely sunny Saturday, the legendary café was heaving, but luckily for Bella and Andy a couple was just leaving as they approached, so they sat down at a little round table under a green-and-gold umbrella, and ordered another bottle of Sancerre.

All around, people were smoking, sharing carafes of wine or sipping from thimbles of strong black coffee, arguing passionately about things that Bella assumed were terribly intellectual.

‘Can’t you just feel the spirit of Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir …’

‘… and Hemingway, with his pram-full of festering dead birds.’

This time the waiter brought their wine not in an ice bucket, but an ice bag – a clear plastic bag the same size and shape as the bags you get for gift-wrapping bottles, but filled with ice and water.

‘Oooh, what a great idea,’ said Bella. ‘We’ll have to get some to take home with us – they’d be brilliant for summer picnics. Though it’s unlikely to be picnic weather when we get back, of course.’

‘They’d still be handy for keeping the wine cold at home.’

‘True. It’s such a distance from the sitting room to the fridge, after all.’

They both laughed, and Bella gave another happy sigh, looking up at the poplar tree overhead, the cloudless blue sky, and around at all the well-groomed, chattering people surrounding them – though you could spot the tourists a mile off, of course. It was just so – well, so Parisian.

The tables were squeezed pretty tightly together on the pavement, and Bella smiled at the woman sitting at the one to their left, reading Paris Match on her own. Probably in her mid-forties, slim and very chic in black capri pants, a boat-necked white T-shirt and enormous tortoiseshell shades, she looked utterly content in her own company.

She smiled politely back at Bella, then did a double take, lifting her shades up to inspect her more closely.