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1   I sat at the kitchen table while Valentine prepared cups of flowery, smoky loose leaf tea Antoine held his in both hands and smiled at me wolfishly He had a bald, muscular head, and a flushed red face He took a long sip of tea, set down the cup, and leant across the table towards me   ‘The first rule is, don’t bring girls here We will be able to hear you We will be able to hear everything’   The plywood second floor had been erected by the three architecture students themselves, hammered into stilts and bolted to the girders criss-crossing the roof of the warehouse Antoine rapped his knuckles on the kitchen table which, he told me, was made of the same plywood as our rooms upstairs   ‘We can hear everything,’ he said again, flashing me a knowing grimace   He held my gaze and continued to knock on the table The rhythm became more and more suggestive, as he wrapped out a deliberate doing-it beat, alternating between his knuckles and the back of his fist Then he stopped the banging and laughed loudly, throwing his head back ‘Arrête,’ said Valentine sharply, topping up my cup with more tea Leaning towards me conspiratorially, Pascal pointed a drum-stick at Antoine and whispered loudly in English, ‘I often break his rules’   The morning after my first night at the warehouse in Montreuil, I was reading at the kitchen table when I heard Pascal start laying into his drum kit in his room beside the kitchen His girlfriend emerged, rubbing her eyes She told me that Pascal practiced every morning before lectures She sat down next to me in her pyjama t-shirt, waiting for the kettle to boil We sat at the table as the drum kit sent spasms of energy through the legs of the second floor, straight up into Antoine’s room above us       2   The architecture students played in a brass band together, The Super Lapins, led by Antoine, who played the trumpet Valentine played the trombone It was Pascal, the drummer, who came to knock on the door of my plywood box-room, after his morning practice session