“So are you in a bit of a fog about language too then?” I asked him.

“That’s enough … you wouldn’t understand. Anyway you shouldn’t be hanging around in the corridors.”

I shot off, because I didn’t want things to turn sour. In my experience fraternizing with the authorities rarely makes for a happy life.

Outside, I looked around for Marie and saw her disappearing into the distance. She was on her own, which was unusual, and if I wanted to make the most of it I’d have to get a move on.

I stopped running when I was twenty metres behind her. She’d turned around because I was puffing like a beached whale. Her curly hair was flying all around her face – the wind had got up and the sky seemed to be darkening.

“Do you live in the village too?” she asked as I walked towards her.

“At the edge of it, just after the garage. I don’t often see you without your friends. You seem to get on well with them?”

“I see them mainly at school, not so much outside … I find that they’re…”

“—snotty and stuck-up?”

I put my hand in front of my mouth, because of course I realized I’d just said something impolite. I blushed too, which surprised me. I had an urge to run away as fast as my legs would carry me, but I was still too puffed out. All the same, she smiled, though it was a very small smile. She seemed to be considering how to reply.

“I certainly wouldn’t have used those words, but I suppose it comes to much the same thing.”

We went on for a bit without talking, passing the big houses at the beginning of the village. Suddenly, I burst out.

“By the way, thank you for giving me the answer to the question about the triangle, the iso… iso…”

“—celes?”

“Yes, celes.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for, because I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t even know you’d cheated…”

We were just walking past the church and to be honest I had no idea how to get myself out of this jam, so I said, “Well, in that case there’s no other answer: it must have been a miracle. And one should always go and give thanks to God when there’s a miracle. It’s not the kind of thing I usually do, but still.”

I hurtled like a cannonball into the church and knelt down to pray. I mumbled a prayer of my own invention to the patron saint of geometry and triangles, isosceles or whatever. Marie’s silhouette was framed in the door like an apparition from ancient times. In the empty church my words sounded like water draining away from a washbasin.

Back outside I attempted to give an impression of dignity, worthy of my dramatic gesture.