Almost home now. In Lodève, where they stopped off to stock up on provisions, the travellers lingered over a salad lunch, drawing a line under the indulgencies of the past month. Tweed felt a growing restlessness. When you were this close to journey’s end you wanted to arrive. Things must be going on up there.

This time it was Jacqueline who argued for taking their time. Four o’clock was peak teatime at Les Coucous du Midi, and who wouldn’t want to make a bit of an entry after a month-long honeymoon? Well, Tweed perhaps, Jacqueline thought, but he’s just going to have to endure it.

‘We’ll get Ruth to make us Marmite toast,’ she said.

Tweed smiled, remembering the happy days when his was the privilege of spreading the Marmite under Bottom’s critical eye. ‘That would be nice,’ he said. ‘It’ll feel like home.’

Jacqueline, who was nothing if not thoughtful, handed the driving seat to Tweed and suggested they take the slower Vieux Chemin de Bionvers. ‘We’re still ahead of ourselves,’ she said. ‘Don’t let’s rush.’

There was more to it than that. In marrying him she knew that she was intruding into a partnership with deep roots. Back in Leamington, Jolly’s woodwork room had been Tweed’s retreat from the painfulness of a school that had lost its soul, while Saucy Matron Bottom with her anarchic wickedness, her sense of fun and her radiant animal perfection had illuminated the gloom for both of them. The long journey south in Jolly’s struggling grocery-laden van had cemented them into a fellowship as firm as any marriage. Once settled in Pissevin Tweed and Jolly had fallen into the habit of taking unhurried lunches in Lodève, and the slow but quiet Vieux Chemin had become the pair’s normal route back. Jolly, who’d driven his old Renault van all the way from England, had the sensitivity to cede command of the little Renault 4L that Bottom got them for pottering around in Pissevin, and as driver Tweed preferred the quieter road when he had a glass or two inside him. Or indeed, at any time. Jacqueline took great care to leave Tweed as much as possible of his old way of life.

‘I wonder what Jolly’s been up to,’ Tweed said as he made the left turn, remembering to signal. ‘I wonder how many of the Cathars still trek up Telegraph Hill to pray in these temperatures. I wonder if they’ve fixed the potholes.’ He felt a strange warm fluttering in his chest.

‘Knowing Agamemnon and the intricate games he plays with himself, I suspect they won’t have,’ said Jacqueline, ‘so you’d better take it steadily. The weight of that Marmite…’

‘I hope Bottom appreciates it, after all that,’ Tweed said. ‘Why she ever had to send us off for Marmite in the first place I shall never understand.’

Jacqueline understood, but said nothing.

Would it have mattered, about the Marmite, Tweed wondered? Would it have ruined their lives to do the safe, the proper thing and declare it at customs? Neither he nor Jacqueline had any idea what sort of border mayhem Boris Johnson and his rotten crew would have let them in for. Would they have found themselves queueing with their catering imports behind seven miles of juggernauts? Would they have spent a morning waiting to be issued with the right paperwork? Would they have been picked on by vengeful French officials for a laboratory spot check? Might they have found the French had put Marmite on some prohibited list along with explosives and poisons? Would this have been the way to end a honeymoon?

Better not to find out, although Tweed, not the most courageous of men, had suffered rising panic attacks as the time approached to run the rien à déclarer gauntlet. As it was they were waved through impatiently, and that was the end of the matter. Enough Marmite in the boot to tilt the little Peugeot’s nose skyward perceptibly and affect its stability in cornering, but of no concern to la belle France.

I knew it would be fine, Tweed told himself. I always knew it would be.

And yes, there they were on Telegraph Hill. Just three or four hardy souls. Hard to understand what they thought they were up to, these middle class Britons who liked to think of themselves as sitting somehow in the Cathar descent. Good people, to be sure, but a trifle… At one level Tweed could sympathise. He himself could be quite emotional about the Cathars, not only because of the tragedy of their burning alive, but for the sheer rightness of their rebellion against a fattened and decadent Catholic Church. One couldn’t help admiring the simplicity and purity of their vision of ascetic righteousness. But quite what that meant to retired software entrepreneurs from Ipswich and estate agents from Haywards Heath was beyond him. He recognised that they were on the right side, these self-styled neo-Cathars, decent, liberal-minded people. If it hadn’t been for their votes Old Bypass, and ultimately perhaps the arch-conman Brian Ottesco, the one who’d mis-sold them the village in the first place, would probably have triumphed…

He rounded a corner and there it was, the first little row of buildings beside the road, the beginnings of the bas-village. Tweed felt his pulse quicken, and something in his throat… What would Jolly be up to?