A tall French woman in a long white cotton dress stood perplexed on a platform at Edinburgh Waverley railway station. When I offered to help her, she held up her phone to me to display her train ticket. She complained that she couldn’t find the service to Sheffield at the time specified on her device.

‘That’s because your ticket is from Sheffield to Edinburgh, and not the other way round. The time you have here is the time that the Sheffield train departs for Edinburgh’, I said in French. ‘When we board the Sheffield train later, I can explain to the guard the mistake that you made when booking your ticket. If you are lucky, he won’t charge you for a replacement.’

Our new friend Julianne boarded the train and sat opposite us in the same carriage. I hoped that she couldn’t follow our conversation in English as TPR started to confess all his brothel visits to me.