“Feelings?” I asked, with a slight delay, as though we were in different time zones.

“Yes, feelings … you know what I mean…”

“Yes, I know. ‘Feelings: the ability to feel; to have an appreciative awareness. A complex emotional state involving susceptibility to impressions. See emotion, passion.’ I came across it yesterday in the dictionary.”

Great idea to bring the dictionary into it! But sometimes it works, changing the subject… I felt like sharing with her my theory that defining things makes them less frightening… She stood stiffly in front of me, as though standing to attention… For example, if you look up “cancer” in the dictionary you’ll see that it comes from a Latin word meaning “crab” and that cuts it down to size a bit… She was frowning… Personally, I think that dictionaries were invented to make life feel less tragic. I wasn’t surprised to learn that they were even written in Ancient Rome.

Suddenly, she seemed to freeze and I thought, Well, that’s great, she’s going to have a fit. But instead her eyes started welling up with tears. It was strange because as they ran down her face I wasn’t sure whether they made her eyes look more alive or even more dead. I found an almost clean tissue in my pocket and she blew her nose, which turned red. As red as my heart, which was wrung out like an old floor-cloth. I didn’t dare make a move.

“Do you want to sit down?” I asked, feeling choked-up.

“Sit down?”

“Yes, on our bench.”

Immediately she stiffened again. I saw the slap coming. But it was too easy: I took a step to one side and of course she missed me. She spun around, lost her balance and fell to the ground. Her knees were skinned and bleeding a bit. This time there was absolutely no room for doubt: I was pathetic. Truly pathetic. I didn’t even let her slap me, when it was the least I could have done. And she’d gone whirling through the air and collapsed into the dust, in front of the watching boules players. She struggled to get up, like a newborn foal that’s unsteady on its feet. I held out a hand, forgetting she couldn’t see it.

“Go away,” she said quietly. “Go away, please. I don’t want to see you any more.”

I would feel terrible for days and days afterwards about that slap that didn’t reach its target.

I ran home fast enough to beat the hundred metres record. My guilt had turned my heart to jelly. At home, Dad was writing a reply to some clients who’d put an advertisement in the Journal. A black fly had landed on the top of his head.

“You look rough. Has there been an earthquake? A tidal wave? Is it the plague? A hostile army at the gates of Paris?”