I took the Metro from Châtelet to Bastille and walked briskly up Richard Lenoir, turned left to buy a few expensive necessities—a baguette, a half-litre of table wine, a handful of vegetables, a jar of sauce—in the local Bonne Marche, and hurried through the warren of small streets between the two boulevards to the tiny flat we rented off Beaumarchais. I had a pasta and salad ready by the time my wife came home. She was tired, as always. At our age it’s hard to find decent work. She’s stuck in admin, for one of the health associations. In the English-speaking world, mutualism is one of those wanker anarchist ideologies. In France, ‘mutualiste’ is a quotidian reality, a name on thousands of signboards for opticians, dentists, doctors. I hoped I had the opportunity to rub Bob’s nose in this at some point.

As for my own work … it too is exhausting, but in a different way.

I brought my wife coffee in bed at nine the following morning. She gave me a glare from under the cover.

“It’s early.”

“I thought you might want to come along.”

“You must be joking. I’m knackered. If I’m awake I’ll watch it on the telly.”

“Okay,” I said.

I kissed her forehead and left the coffee on the bedside table. I caught up with the news and online chatter over my own breakfast, and left the flat about ten-thirty. The sky was cloudless, the air cold and still. The low sun gilded the gold of the Bastille monument a few hundred metres down the road. Children whooped and yelled on the slides and swings in the little park along the centre of the boulevard. On a bench a homeless man slept, or lay very still, under rimed newspaper sheets. On the next bench, a young couple shared a joint and glanced furtively at the tramp. The market stalls had been up for hours, at this season selling preserves, knick-knacks, knock-offs, football shirts.

I’d intended to start the day with a brisk walk, but changed my mind when, after a hundred metres, my left knee played up. I turned back and limped down the entrance stairs of Richard Lenoir. The Metro was crowded and slow, stinking of Friday night. Things hadn’t always been like this, I reminded myself.