They had lunch in a little café in the Place Trois Perdrix. It was dark outside, with low grey clouds coming in from the Rhône valley, and the lights were on. All round them on the walls there were Mediterranean frescos – beaches and sunlit Tuscan hills and the parched yellow sand of the bull-ring. There was piano music somewhere, and the distant noise of dishes was clattering in the kitchen. There were only two other diners – a man reading a paper at one table, and a woman at another staring down at her coffee cup.

Irina said quietly: ‘Have you written home yet?’

‘Yes.’

‘To Angela?’

‘Yes. I don’t write to my mother very often.’ He wondered, when he had said it, why he had told her that. ‘I told her I’d met you here.’

‘Do you think she’ll remember me?’

‘Of course she will.’