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cyclists. The Tour de France had come early that year. All the cyclists were smoking cigarettes.
    Tim was clutching a streetlamp. Now he was wearing a striped jersey and a beret and there was a string of onions hanging from his side.
“Je suis,”
he said.
“Tu es, il est…”
    I opened my mouth to reply.
    Crash! Crash! Crash!
    I saw it before he did. Perhaps he didn’t see it at all. Even now, with the drug pumping through my body, I knew that it wasn’t real, that I was hallucinating. But it made no difference. As far as I was concerned, everything I saw was real. And if it was real, it could kill me. It could step on me. It could crush me.
    The Eiffel Tower! On our first day in Paris we had crossed the city to visit it. Now the Eiffel Tower was coming to visit us. There it was, walking across Paris, swinging one iron foot, then the next, moving like some sort of giant, four-legged crab. One of its feet came down in a pancake stall. Wood shattered. Pancakes flew in all directions. Somebody screamed.
    The cheese was getting softer. I was sinking into a boulevard of Brie, a dual carriageway of Camembert. The squirming yellow slipped round my waist, rose over my shoulder and twisted round my neck. I didn’t even try to fight. I’d had enough. I waited for it to pull me under.
    I thought I was going to die and if I’d waited another minute I might well have. But just then I heard what I thought was an owl, hooting in my ear. At the same time, I found myself staring at a face I knew. A dark-haired man in a grey-coloured suit. I became aware of a blue flashing light which either belonged to a dragon or a police car. I looked up and saw something driving out of the moon, flying through the sky towards me. An ambulance.
    “Don’t go to sleep!” a voice commanded. “Don’t go to sleep! Don’t go to sleep!”
    But it was too late. I went to sleep.
    For ever.

THE MAD AMERICAN
    “You’re lucky to be alive,” the man said.
    It was two days later. I don’t want to tell you about those two days. I’d spent both of them in hospital in Paris and all I can say is, if you’ve ever had your stomach pumped, you’ll know there are plenty of things you can do that are more fun. I don’t remember much about the first day. The next day, I felt like a spin-drier that’s been left on too long. All I’d eaten in the entire time was a little bread and water. Fortunately, the water didn’t have bubbles. I don’t think I could have managed the bubbles.
    And now, here I was in the headquarters of Sûreté, the French police force. It’s funny how police stations are the same the whole world over. This may have been grander and smarter than New Scotland Yard. The curtains were velvet and the pictures on the wall showed some grey-haired Frenchman in a suit rather than our own grey-haired Queen in a crown. But it still smelled the same.
    Tim was sitting next to me. He was the colour of the yoghurt that had brought us here in the first place, with eyes like crushed strawberries. His hair was dishevelled and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a month. I was going to say something but decided against it. I probably looked just as bad.
    We were in the office of the Chief of Police – a man called Christien Moire. I knew because I’d seen the name and title on the door. It was on his desk too. Maybe he was worried he was going to forget it. He was the man in the grey suit whom I’d seen standing outside Le Chat Gris, the man who had been talking to the receptionist and who had later taken our photograph. Things were beginning to add up even if I still had no idea of the sum total.
    “Another one hour and it would have been too late,” Moire went on. He spoke English as if he had no idea what he was saying, lingering on every word. He had the sort of accent you get in bad television plays:
Anuzzer wan our an’ eet would ’ave bin too late
. I hope you get the idea. “You were very lucky,” he added.
    “Sure,” I muttered.