By the light of the candle we explored our new territory; the old ovens still surprisingly good beneath the grease and soot, the pine-panelled walls, the blackened earthen tiles. Anouk found the old awning folded away in a back-room and we dragged it out; spiders scattered from under the faded canvas. Our living area is above the shop; a bedsit and washroom, ridiculously tiny balcony, terracotta planter with dead geraniums… Anouk made a face when she saw it.

“It’s so dark, Maman.” She sounded awed, uncertain in the face of so much dereliction. “And it smells so sad.”

She is right. The smell is like daylight trapped for years until it has gone sour and rancid, of mouse-droppings and the ghosts of things unremembered and unmourned. It echoes like a cave, the small heat of our presence only serving to accentuate every shadow. Paint and sunlight and soapy water will rid us of the grime, but the sadness is another matter, the forlorn resonance of a house where no-one has laughed for years. Anouk’s face looked pale and large-eyed in the candlelight, her hand tightening in mine.

“Do we have to sleep here?” she asked. “Pantoufle doesn’t like it. He’s afraid.”

I smiled and kissed her solemn golden cheek.

“Pantoufle is going to help us.”

We lit a candle for every room, gold and red and white and orange. I prefer to make my own incense, but in a crisis the bought sticks are good enough for our purposes, lavender and cedar and lemongrass. We each held a candle, Anouk blowing her toy trumpet and I rattling a metal spoon in an old saucepan, and for ten minutes we stamped around every room, shouting and singing at the top of our voices – Out! Out! Out! until the walls shook and the outraged ghosts fled, leaving in their wake a faint scent of scorching and a good deal of fallen plaster. Look behind the cracked and blackened paintwork, behind the sadness of things abandoned, and begin to see faint outlines, like the after-image of a sparkler held in the hand – here a wall adazzle with golden paint, there an armchair, a little shabby, but coloured a triumphant orange, the old awning suddenly glowing as half-hidden colours slide out from beneath the layers of grime. Out! Out! Out! Anouk and Pantoufle stamped and sang and the faint images seemed to grow brighter – a red stool beside the vinyl counter, a string of bells against the front door. Of course, I know it’s only a game. Clamours to comfort a frightened child. There’ll have to be work done, hard work, before any of this becomes real. And yet for the moment it is enough to know that the house welcomes us, as we welcome it. Rock salt and bread by the doorstep to placate any resident gods. Sandalwood on our pillow, to sweeten our dreams.

Later Anouk told me Pantoufle wasn’t frightened any more, so that was all right. We slept together in our clothes on the floury mattress in the bedroom with all the candles burning, and when we awoke it was morning.

Actually the bells woke us. I hadn’t realized quite how close we were to the church until I heard them, a single low resonant drone falling into a bright carillon dommm fla-di-dadi dommmm – on the downbeat. I looked at my watch. It was six o’clock. Grey-gold light filtered through the broken shutters onto the bed.

I stood up and looked out onto the square, wet cobbles shining. The square white church tower stood out sharply in the morning sunlight, rising from a hollow of dark shopfronts; a bakery, a florist, a shop selling graveyard paraphernalia; plaques, stone angels, enamelled everlasting roses… Above their discreetly shuttered facades the white tower is a beacon, the roman numerals of the clock gleaming redly at six-twenty to baffle the devil, the Virgin in her dizzy eyrie watching the square with a faintly sickened expression. At the tip of the short spire a weathervane turns – west to west-northwest – a robed man with a scythe. From the balcony with the dead geranium I could see the first arrivals to Mass. I recognized the woman in the tartan coat from the carnival; I waved to her, but she hurried on without an answering gesture, pulling her coat protectively around her. Behind her the felt-hatted man with his sad brown dog in tow gave me a hesitant smile. I called down brightly to him, but seemingly village etiquette did not allow for such informalities, for he did not respond, hurrying in his turn into the church, taking his dog with him.