Upstairs there’s Suzon, whom everyone calls Mamoun; and Annie, who invited us for a drink; and Johnny, who’s a cat. Annie upstairs invited us for a drink on their cool-tiled terrace, so we took the stone steps up with a plate of cake.

Suzon is ninety-nine this year. Her hair is white and wispy all over. She remembers being in Northampton in 1965.

Annie – (she is a daughter. There are other daughters, even daughters of daughters – it gets that way when one is ninety-nine.) –

Annie punctuates her sentences with drags on thin brown cigarettes that smell like cigars. “Je me suis mariée tôt,” she says. Drag. “Trop tôt.” Grin. When she got married – the first time, anway – she told her father she wasn’t having the wedding in church. “Your husband,” he said, a staunch Catholic, “will always be to me your concubine; your children bastards.” She laughed, Annie did. Her father went to her civil ceremony. He went on to love her husband. He loved her children.

They found an old family photo album recently. “Dans la famille,” Annie said, “il y avait de jolies femmes.” She smoked. “Pas toutes.” “Il y avait aussi,” she said, “de jolis hommes.” Smile. Drag. Grin. “Pas tous.”

She has a laugh like someone who has long smoked thin brown cigarettes that smell like cigars. Her terrace looks out over ours, over the sea.