Looking back on it, apart from this year’s wildfires, the stultifying heat of high summer in Provence isn’t so bad if you accept that the time to exercise is 6 a.m. and work is only possible before midday and from late afternoon onwards. Holidaymakers and the better-off have pools to jump into and air conditioning to enjoy. But during the afternoons the rest of us lie almost naked on the bed under a ceiling fan, shutters closed, while the Rouge Noir varnish on our toenails melts. I’m told that Frenchmen sit in their pants watching the Tour de France.

During the afternoons the rest of us lie almost naked on the bed under a ceiling fan, shutters closed

During the afternoons the rest of us lie almost naked on the bed under a ceiling fan, shutters closed

One such afternoon about five years ago, Jeremy and I were lying side by side, inert, under the whirring blades of the fan, when we heard voices on the usually quiet public pathway below the bedroom window. An older man was animatedly telling a young woman about the house. He seemed to know more than I did about the place and spent a long time at the foot of the stone steps looking up at the front door. Curious, I pulled a dress over my head and went down. 

Michel was from Marseille and had lived here in the cave house as a child in the mid-1950s. He’d brought his daughter, who lived in Paris, to show her. I invited........

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