The café Ménage à Trois, on the other hand, was a chic homage to all things stereotypically French. Like Edie would know. The only French things she ever came in close contact with were mega-size bags of frozen French fries when they were on special offer in Iceland. But that’s what it said in the local rag, so who was she to argue. There were arty black-and-white photographs of onion-sellers in berets atop their bicyclettes adorning the walls, so that was French enough for her. Her one and only time away from British soil had been on a day trip on the ferry to Calais for some cheap Christmas shopping with Lyssa. She was so excited to get away for the day that she’d been sick even before she left home. A force-nine gale in the English Channel had encouraged her further and she’d spent her entire inaugural visit to a foreign land throwing up in a grotty loo in a soulless hypermarket while Lyssa bought French bread and Camembert and other stuff that she could just have easily got from Sainbury’s. Since then, Edie had never quite got to grips with the fact that she was supposed to be a European and, therefore, should have a better appreciation of her continental brothers. Soft, heavily accented music oozed from the speakers and, as Edith Piaf and Vanessa Paradis were the only two French female singers she’d ever heard of, Edie assumed it must be one of them. Trying to stop terror from paralysing her, she focussed again on her new friend. ‘I understand it’s very good though.’

Pip called a waitress over. She was tall, skinny and dressed from head to toe in black Lycra with the addition of a crisp white apron, laced a dozen times round her impossibly thin waist. That was not the waist of a woman who had borne six children, Edie noted. Pip pointed at Archie as if he couldn’t quite fathom what he was. ‘Do you have any chairs suitable for…?’

The girl’s eyes widened. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘We don’t normally get many…I’ll find out….’ And she disappeared hastily.

‘Truck!’ Archie shouted at the couple on the next table. They recoiled in horror and then glared at Edie as if she were the worst kind of mother for letting her child speak out loud in public. The waitress returned with a high chair that looked as if it had never been used and reluctantly set about man-handling it into place. When she’d finished her performance, Edie stuck Archie in the top of it. He promptly screamed loudly, so she snatched him out, sat down and stuck him on her lap. Pip looked dazed.

‘He’ll be all right in a minute,’ Edie promised, jiggling Archie up and down on her knee, hard enough to make him sick.

Pip sat down and gulped at his drink.