The nurse is trying to catch my eye. She thinks I tire you. How can you bear them, with their loud voices and nursery manner? Time for our rest, now, I think. Her archness is jarring, unbearable. And yet she means kindly, your eyes tell me. Forgive them, they know not what they do. I am not kind. I come here for my own relief, not yours. And yet I like to believe my visits give you pleasure, keeping you in touch with the hard edges of a world gone soft and featureless. Television an hour a night, turning five times a day, food through a tube. To be talked over as if you were an object – Can he hear us? Do you think he understands? – your opinions unsought, discarded… To be closed from everything, and yet to feel, to think. This is the truth of hell, stripped of its gaudy mediaevalisms. This loss of contact. And yet I look to you to teach me communication. Teach me hope.

The dog-man’s name is guillaume. He helped me with the delivery yesterday and he was my first customer this morning. He had his dog, Charly, with him, and he greeted me with a shy politeness which was almost courtly.

“It looks wonderful,” he said, looking around. “You must have been up all night doing this.”

I laughed.

“It’s quite a transformation,” said Guillaume. “You know, I’m not sure why, but I’d just assumed it was going to be another bakery.”

“What, and ruin poor Monsieur Poitou’s trade? I’m sure he’d thank me for that, with his lumbago playing up the way it is, and his poor wife an invalid and sleeping so badly.”

Guillaume bent to straighten Charly’s collar, but I saw his eyes twinkle.

“I see you’ve met,” he said.

“Yes. I gave him my recipe for bedtime tisane.”

“If it works, he’ll be a friend for life.”

“It works,” I assured him. Then, reaching under the counter I pulled out a small pink box with a silver valentine bow on it. “Here. For you. My first customer.”

Guillaume looked little startled.

“Really, Madame, I-”

“Call me Vianne. And I insist.” I pushed the box into his hands. “You’ll like them. They’re your favourite kind.”

He smiled at that. “How do you know?” he enquired, tucking the box carefully into his coat pocket.

“Oh, I can just tell,” I told him mischievously. “I know everyone’s favourite. Trust me, this is yours.”

The sign wasn’t finished until about noon. Georges Clairmont came to hang it himself then, profusely apologetic at his lateness. The scarlet shutters look beautiful against the new whitewash and Narcisse, grumbling halfheartedly about the late frosts, brought some new geraniums from his nursery to put in my planters. I sent them both away with valentine boxes and similar expressions of bemused pleasure. After that, barring a few schoolchildren, I had few visitors. It is always the case when a new shop opens in such a small village; there is a strict code of behaviour governing such situations and people are reserved, pretending indifference though inwardly they burn with curiosity. An old lady ventured in, wearing the traditional black dress of the country widow. A man with dark, florid features bought three identical boxes without asking what was inside. Then for hours, no-one came. It was what I expected; people need time to adapt to change, and though I caught several sharp glances at my display window, no-one seemed inclined to go in. Behind the studied unconcern however, I sensed a kind of seething, a whispering of speculation, a twitching of curtains, gathering of resolve. When at last they came, it was together; seven or eight women, Caroline Clairmont, wife of the signmaker, amongst them. A ninth, arriving somewhat behind the group, remained outside, her face almost touching the window, and I recognized the woman in the tartan coat.