The sun was out in time for Saturday morning. We piled into the convertible, three girls and a shopping list, direction Pleaux. The bourriol stand was up and at ’em in Place Georges Pompidou, three hot plates with buckwheat crêpes in the making. I ordered six to go, and the nice man gave me one for the spot, slip slap strawberry jam and wrapped in a paper napkin.

Post-lunch, a lie-down on the lawn. At the level of the green, grasshoppers grasshop and butterflies butterfly. I fell asleep in the sun, summer under my skin, and when I woke the breeze sounded like Jill Scott. I got up, finally, and stretched, and Maud was reading on the stone steps. “Yup,” I said. “Yup,” she said.



We were invited to tea after, with the grandpère and the grandmère and the tante Malou. Down the road with the black-and-white cows, Tante Malou’s house is a yellow room and an orange room, a bird room and, upstairs, a forest room. In the garden, the pink rose bushes smelled like pink rose bushes. Like baby bears, we combed her redcurrant plants. The berries stained my fingers deep pink, no complaints here.

In a copper pot back home, redcurrant jam in the making was fuschia like my skirt.