One of the first discoveries you make if you spend any time in France is that the term les affaires does not mean what you thought it did. Admittedly, the affaire you first thought of is often tied up in les affaires, but not always, and only ever as a constituent part. Les affaires are a very French phenomenon. They heat up slowly, but rarely reach a sustained boil – or if they do, it is only to subside in the same fitful way as they began.
They are by definition convoluted; they reach into usually hidden recesses of French society. And they have a vast and ever-changing cast of characters. At least one will be devastatingly good-looking; at least one will possess legendary wealth, and another will be linked to a French luxury brand – and occasionally they will be one and the same. But always, some way along the line, they will brush the edge of government to threaten the precarious edifice of French power.
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