There isn’t much point in northern France. The motorway services at Wimereux make no pretence about it. You’ve got your toilets, there was paella if you’d wanted, you can sit and watch the wind turbine, what more d’you want? Not our fault if the name of the place sounds like some 1915 killing field…

It’s only at the Aire de la Baie de Somme that you can begin to imagine the faintest hint of the scent of a real France somewhere ahead. Tweed, Jolly and Bottom left the van panting and perspiring, bought themselves baguettes with Gruyère and ham and ate them looking out at a duck and bulrush theme that masked a featureless landscape.

‘Next time,’ said Bottom, ‘let’s aim really high. Let’s not settle for anything less than Essex.’

‘Oh,’ Tweed said, ‘just you wait. You’ll love it. It’s a real picture postcard village we’re heading for, what the French would call a bastide, a walled village on a hilltop. All built in medieval stone, with twisting streets to confuse the wind in winter. The actual house must be built on solid rock, because the cellar is more or less at ground level, with steps up to the front door. The rooms aren’t enormous but we’ve got three floors, counting the attic. Incidentally our cellar is under the house next door. The place is full of little eccentricities like that. Next door’s cellar is under us. Either the whole village slid sideways at some point or French notaries have been doing some fancy conveyancing. It’s that kind of place. Colourful. The bar has a stuffed horse on the wall. It’s just the sort of place you can write a book about. Don’t boil a kettle while somebody’s taking a shower or you’ll black out the whole village. Very French.’

‘Oh well, that’s fine then. As long as it’s French. What about people?’

‘Oh, basically peasants. You don’t see much of them. They only come out to get food off the vans.’ Tweed caught sight of the look on Bottom’s face and hastily added, ‘Bags of life in Lodève though, just down the road. Absolutely humming with life. Terribly, er, swinging sort of town.’

Bottom gave a sceptical grunt.

‘Anyway,’ Tweed went on, ‘you’ll see all that soon enough. Right now we’d better start thinking ourselves into our roles. If we slip up at the outset we’ll never recover. Jolly and I shouldn’t have much difficulty passing as natives. It’s you we need to concentrate on.’

‘Concentrate away.’ Bottom licked a crumb from the corner of her lip and took another bite of her baguette.

‘It’s just the language. If we’re to get material for the book it’s essential that people take us into their confidence, which they’ll never do if they know we’re English. So we need you to be French.’

‘Well, tough shit, paleface.’

‘Here’s one possibility: you could pretend to be simple. No? All right. It was just a thought. Well, we did have some other ideas. We’re going to have to put you together in bits and pieces, so let’s see what we’ve got. For a start you surely must know a certain amount of French.’

‘Like, non, je ne regrette rien? That sort of thing?’

Tweed winced. ‘Y-ess, I can imagine situations where that might be called for. That would be a start. But obviously we could hardly claim French as your native language. Fortunately there are parts of France where they speak stuff that’s quite unrelated to French. I’m thinking of Brittany. There are still people who speak Brezhoneg. It has more in common with Welsh and Cornish than it does with French.’

‘Fine,’ Bottom said. ‘There’s a book stall back in there, so you can buy me a few Cornish dictionaries.’

‘No need. Only a minority of Bretons speak Brezhoneg, so the risk of meeting anyone in Languedoc who’s ever heard it spoken is practically nil. Any sort of weird noise would do. Could we hear you do some weird noises, just to see?’

Bottom gave him a wry look, but obliged.

Tweed winced again. ‘Yes. Well, we can work on that. Perhaps just a shade less African. You could try basing it around a few Welsh phrases.’

‘Tweed…’

‘I know. But they don’t speak Welsh either, so it doesn’t matter what you say. I’ve found some websites with Welsh lessons. Once we get there you can practise. You’ll soon pick it up. Meanwhile you can use some Welsh place names, just to get the hang of it. Now, the other thing is, can you do broken English in a French accent?’

Bottom raised an eyebrow. ‘You’d be surprised the things I can do in a French accent, dearie.’

‘No doubt. And is speaking English one of them? Because there may be very rare occasions when we run across someone who has a smattering. Unlikely, in this place, but you never know. We could say you only speak Breton and a bit of English. But it would have to be in a French accent. You could practise on us while we’re driving down, just to get used to it.’

‘I told you it wasn’t going to be a holiday.’

‘It will be, you’ll see. One last thought. To help out. On top of all the things I’ve suggested, perhaps you could pretend to be just a little bit simple. Just a little bit.’