Maud came in on the 18:56 train from Paris; we took the Tube and a smelly bus and at eight o’clock we ran down Defoe Road to the France-England rugby semifinals at the Prince. We heard a cheer rising from one of the flats on the street, and we ran faster. She had a kilo of comté in her bag, and we ran, laughing; she also had a tin of home-made quince paste, a yoghurt pot of apple compote, a bottle of fancy moisturising oil, some rose tea and a brown paper bag of fresh walnuts from Prades. We skidded round the corner on Kynaston, aiming left, and tumbled through the doorway under the flat-screen TV like slapstick sports stars entering the stadium. The cheer did not go up; we did not put our hands to our hearts to sing lustily. Olive and Bastien and Laureen were holding our places by the window; we sat down and the burgers were not long coming.

A fellow at the bar turned and sneered at us each time the English team scored; he had piggy eyes and a piggy nose. “He’s gloating,” Emily said, noting that the Frenchies in our group only had eyes for the game, “to the three people in here who don’t give a shit.”



Sunday the sun was out, and when we left the rich velvets and the glowing autumn leaves, the long-haired girls and the thick, rustling chiffons of the Millais exhibit – “The thing is,” Maud said, in the portraits room, “if we knew an artist, that could be us on the wall up there.” – when we left we blinked into the sunlight and made quick plans for an impromptu picnic. Laureen led us to the giant Sainsbury’s by her; when we left the pork and pickle pies and the vintage cheddars, the British apples and the chocolate milk of the super supermarket, well, they were in our shopping bags, leaving with us.



We were five on blankets unfurled in a sunny spot in St George’s Square, over to the end by the late roses. Maud sliced the raisin loaf. Olive uncorked the wine bottle. Laureen had washed the grapes, and they were crisp like the day. I crossed my legs and piled my skirt in the space between, like the best of convent girls.

Bastien was prone on the lawn later – a pasty and two pies later, several cheese and honey-baked-ham tartines later – and reaching for a paper plate upon which to rest his head. We found that the sun had crept on, and that we were sitting in damp shadow. We packed up and collapsed on Laureen’s sofas while she brought us frothy cappuccinos in cream-coloured teacups. We watched reality TV and old episodes of Friends till the sky was soft and deep and dark.



Maud came in on the train from Paris, and we woke to pots of tea in cool autumn mornings. Early one day – I put on what I’d worn the night before, I slipped into green sneakers and I walked down the street rubbing the sleep out of my eyes – we sliced into a loaf of wholemeal bread from the Spence Bakery, warm still from the oven. I have a jar of orange jam open in the fridge, and one with whole, squishy strawberries.



We went to a spice shop where a skinny boy in glasses was taking a painstaking inventory of packets and tins. The little bags of spices and spice mixes on the narrow shelves were all the shades of the desert and the shimmering heat – ochre, sepia and burnt sienna, and the colours of the sand in dry riverbeds – and the small shop – it was a room big enough for a man with a moustache and a typewriter and the sound of his typing – smelled of curries and the swirling secrets of old womens’ kitchens. Bags of lavender sat in a box on the staircase, and over to one side cinnamon sticks were tied into bundles like firewood for elves and sprites. Outside the garlic hung from the awning and there were bags of nuts and dried fruit for a pound a bag.

“What,” I asked the storeboy, and he held his pen and his paper still, “would you do with this?” I had a tin of rose petal spread in my hand. It had a surprising heft. “You could eat it on bread,” he said, “or use it in stews.” I don’t know what he could have said that would have stopped me from putting it on the low wooden counter next to the cash machine. The corrugated tin had had printed upon it lush twin blooms in a deep and inviting pink; I am a sucker for roses and I stop to smell every one.