Five Glasses. Six Glasses.

Slipping my passport into the machine. I stared into my own eyes, as the pixelated camera darted around the screen to meet them.

Through the fluorescent lights of duty free, I stopped to milk orange-scented balm into my hands, in a fashion that would have made any witnesses wonder if I'd ever seen a push-pump before. I would soon be reeking of citrus.

The escalators at Charles De Gaulle are long. I was submerged into the cold blue light emanating from the tunnelled walls. French teens and their parents lined the arrival gate. Each pair, connected by a sheet of paper. Each with a poorly written name.

I looked to mine. Held by a small French girl.

The tiny Fiat barely held my bag. The drive to Le Pecq was quiet. The jet lag combined with the now painfully obvious language barrier did not allow for very stimulating conversation.

It was morning when I arrived. Cedric, the father, had brewed coffee and placed pre-packaged crepes into a toaster. He spoke to me in English. The first time anyone had done so since I'd landed.

A wave of anxiety broke across my brow. No mother. My six-week stay was to be with Cedric. The stoic, nicotine-addicted, but generous Cedric.

Hour three of the drive was when I figured out where we were going. They thought a surprise would be fun.

Strasbourg. The trip was for the Christmas market, where an inescapable scent of mulled wine drenched the endless lines of stalls. Five hours with my knees pressed against my chest in the two-door clown car — not nearly big enough to hide whatever unspoken tensions were so clearly brewing between the pair.

Camille passed me a bowl. The bowl was filled with pasta. Not uniform pasta. Crammed into the dish, small squiggly noodles stared back at me, like a bowl of overfed yellow worms.

Amelie remained seated. Cracking an egg over a mug. Separating the yolk. She reached for a bottle of Heinz tomato sauce. Squirt. Squirt.

I asked Camille what she wanted me to do with the copious amount of egg whites now overflowing the communal mug.

She meant it. I flushed. Watching the clear mucus wash away into Strasbourg's sewer system.

The lounge room was filled with people. An older woman sat on the couch.

"OPIUM." "OPIUM!!!" "VIENS ICI."

A small elderly dog, once white in colour, scurried across the floor and leapt into her arms. No one reacted. My confusion arose from elsewhere — no one had reacted to the overwhelming stench of weed permeating through the house.

Amelie had a surprise for me upstairs. I had gotten rather tired of Amelie's surprises.

Eight. Maybe nine. Kittens. Four maybe five days old. They couldn't yet open their eyes. Needing to wash my hands — now soaked in kitten urine — I opened the door across the hall.

Three men. One coffee table. The largest amount of weed I'd ever seen.

Slamming the door, I bumped into Hélène.

Is she introducing herself to me? I'd met Hélène before. Strasbourg. She's in the outfit we left the apartment in. Another woman walks up the stairs. Hélène. Same outfit. Same hair. Same face.

Cedric had called into a cellar for a wine tasting on the drive home from Strasbourg. Unsurprisingly my youthful liver failed to handle six glasses of varying wines. The five-hour journey home was spent taking deep breaths as I tried to conceal my immature palate. This yes-and improv technique had bitten me on the arse.

Christmas lunch was early. We were there before noon. I was a vegetarian of five years. Predictably this had caused some confusion and a great deal of ambitious cooking.

Cedric's mother was gracious enough to google vegetarian cooking.

I took my seat at the table. Cheeses and meats and pâtés uniformly lined the centre. A small bowl arrived. Cubed, raw, extra firm tofu swam in a mixture of malt vinegar and oil, amongst which the entirety of a can of diced beetroot had been added. The stark white cubes drowned in deep red liquid, bobbing up and down as if they too were in search of air.

A plate tracked down the table like a baton in an incredibly poor relay team. A dozen peeled quail eggs, sage in colour, rolling around their ceramic stage.

Cedric's father had not eased up on his pouring. The rubbery blocks shifted to a blushed pink the longer they sat in the claret; their acidic aftertaste and arctic temperature caused my jaw to tense with every bite.

Five glasses. Six glasses.