“She wasn’t at all blurry. Quite the opposite, she was very clearly defined. She’d be an instant cure for any short-sighted person who looked at her. And do you know what it was that got me thinking like this?”

“No.”

“Well, it was her socks.”

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds. Then I went on.

“Dad…?”

“Yes?”

“You need to buy me some new socks, with good elastic, that pull up straight. I truly believe I’ll do better at school with the right kind of socks – supercharged socks in fact! But hey, Dad, at my age did you dress smartly?”

He thought for a bit. Some hikers came into the café.

“Very smartly. I used to wear a tie and a waistcoat. And loafers.”

My father thought that looking smart was a sort of passport, and that if my grandfather – who’d handed down his taste for elegance – hadn’t been dressed like a duke, he’d never have managed to fit in when he arrived in France.

I tried to imagine him smartly dressed in the playground, and it made me feel a bit emotional, because of the way that the past is almost as unreachable as the future.

“So, your miracle, will it be the socks?”

“In a way.”

We went back to the Panhard and got her going again. Dad manoeuvred the gear lever very gently, almost stroking it.

Then he put the Rolling Stones back on.

4

By the end of the following school week I’d come to accept that Marie had nothing to do with the mathematical miracle. I even began to think I might have written down the answer myself without realizing it. History tells of even stranger things than that happening – I can’t think of any examples right now – but I know it’s a thought that came to me at the time.