Provence

Midnight. In preparation for a 5 a.m. rise I’d been asleep for two sweltering hours under the ceiling fan when the phone rang. It was a video call. Without glasses I don’t see well but recognised the caller as Jacob, a man I’d met in June when I’d been invited to a fancy villa near the coast for the night with old pals who were visiting friends of theirs. Jacob and I got on well. In the heated pool, having only just met, we sang: ‘Heaven… I’m in heaven…’ At dinner I admired his string of huge black Tahitian pearls and he told me about his exotic social life in New York. We exchanged our best anecdotes. At the end of the week he called to see me at home in the cave. He took me for a posh lobster lunch during which, proving there was no end to his kindness, he commissioned a painti

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