Another office. The offices get more and more classy and futuristic. I am back from two days in Paris.

This retail floor has a biophilic wall and fishtanks. It is the HQ of Hadley’s latest employer. The greenery in the wall trembles in a hidden airflow.

She is taking me to lunch. Normally, she tells me, she eats at her desk. She still loves macaroni cheese which she heats in a microwave.

We eat at a half-empty, very upscale restaurant. Just two other diners, two men, talking quietly, obviously planning something intricate and important to them.

There has been an incident in her building this morning. An intruder entered, shouting. The female security guard,  dressed to look like a hostess or greeter, suppressed him.

“We don’t know what he was saying. They look like sylphs but they can tie a man up in knots before he can say Mon Dieu….It’s a very edgy time.”

Two employees died in the Bataclan massacre two weeks ago.

There is an encircling gloom around the city. “Although none of the attacks were nearby, the scale was terrifying. I have this awful picture of shooters on the balcony, firing down into the stalls”.

She wants to discuss Jake’s future.

Jake has just started Middle School or collège. She explained how she was keen for him to go to a public French school rather than an international school. Then she wants him to go to a British or American University. She still finds the shorter French school year a nuisance.

“The Toussaint holidays — two weeks at the end of October, starting back at the beginning of November — are bizarre. Then there are another two weeks in late February. Don’t have so much of a problem with the long summer holiday — that seems a good idea.”

Could Jake come to us in February?

After lunch Hadley took me back and showed me photographs of the couture collection to be shown in January.

Long skirted suits in beige, and cream and navy blue. Models from all quarters of the planet. A decor of grass and wood. Youth and beauty in its efflorescence, dressed in the colours and textures of flowers.

“Very different form the ready-to-wear collection”. For that the Grand Palais was turned in to an airport terminal. Models walking through with rolling luggage. The designer on at the end, white hair in a pony tail, high collar, big sunglasses, leading a little long-haired boy by the hand.

Hadley’s ensembles combine pleasure and beauty, taste and intelligence, with something unexpected often, waiting to be noticed, but discreet.

I think a woman who dresses carefully is posing a question: who sees me for what I am? Who is that person who really wants to know me? Each outfit poses a little test.

I go to a bookshop and wait a while before meeting Jake at 4.30.