A host of friends descended on the household wanting to make the most of Jean and Marie’s final weeks in Paris; they took up all their evenings. These were noisy times, and Marie became bored with having to listen to so-called intellectual discussions whilst records blared out incessantly, and glasses were filled and refilled. Around midnight or one o’clock, someone would say that the evening could not end so soon. Jean, uplifted by this orgy of pleasure, would propose new places they could go on to: looking exhausted, their enjoyment over, they’d trawl through the city. With luck, they might manage a new wave of excitement if one of the party, laughing uproariously, gesticulated at the long line of Hachette press lorries as they drove at full speed along the rue du Louvre. The night would always climax in a cacophony of delight when they reached Les Halles and saw the beautiful vegetables piled up in the icy dawn. These wan-looking creatures, who knew each other too well, would slacken their pace and look behind them, awaiting Marie.
