We arrived in Roscoff early Monday morning. We came off the boat and had my passport checked by a tubby man in a denim Tex Avery button-down. Just after seven in the morning on a Monday, Roscoff was still but for the seagulls calling in the wind. The harbourfront hotels were quiet; everyone at the Écume des Jours, it seemed, was asleep. The signs were still up from the weekend fête de l’oignon rosé, but there were no lone farmers wiping away stray tears, nary a papery onion skin being blown along in the breeze.

Olive found a boulangerie, and we sat, apple juice, water, two croissants and a weathered wooden bench, facing the water while his fever died down again. We found an open café later, one of two, by the small streets of the old town, just in time for morning coffees and a morning drizzle. “Il pleut,” I said, but the locals just smiled at each other and said, “C’est la Bretagne.”

Olive’s mum and stepfather came to get us shortly, by the roundabout and the friterie. There was fish soup and rouille for lunch in Locquirec, that first afternoon, and then I fell asleep in the car, as I do. When I woke up we were turning left, and left, and left again for home.