Eventually Dad said, “All things considered, it’s not too bad, I admit. Some of the comments are even quite encouraging.”

On the whole, I pretty much agreed with him.

“Except for sport, obviously,” he added.

The thing is, Marie and I had decided to ignore the issue of sport. We’d thought it best to concentrate on the key priorities.

“But sport’s important, you know!”

He pretended to dribble with an invisible ball, which was quite funny.

“Take me, for example, Victor: when I was young, I was the Paris team’s top player.”

“Are you having me on?”

He mimed shooting the ball into the net as hard as he could.

“Of course I am! But it’s still true that sport is important.”

There was a moment of silence. Dad gave me back the report and then began to clear away the cups from the living-room table. He started off towards the kitchen and then suddenly turned around.

“Your mum would be proud of you!” he blurted out.

And then off he went. I heard him rummaging around in the cupboards.

“Dad?” I asked, while he was still in the kitchen.

“Yes?”

“Did you love Mum a lot?”

He didn’t answer straight away and it felt as though the whole house was swallowed in silence. I held my breath. I heard him coming back towards me and looked up to see his slightly faded blue eyes. I thought to myself, If one day you’re not here any more, Dad, I’m going to keep the blue of your eyes to warm my heart.

He pretended to be absorbed in his journal. He was like a wounded animal that withdraws from the world, which was an awesome expression I’d heard at school.

“Yes, I loved her very much. Do you remember when she left?”

“Not really. I only remember that around that time Uncle Zak came back from a long trip and lived with us for a while.”

“And then it was just the two of us. And without you I’d have been sunk. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Dad, I understand about things in the great pool of life.”

It was properly solemn. Dad did a fart to break the tension, and I did a smaller one out of solidarity. And after that we had a good laugh.

Then I got my rucksack out, with the stuff I was supposed to revise that week. Marie was expecting me that afternoon and later the Metro were supposed to be coming over for a jamming session. I hadn’t told them what was going on – because I had my reputation as a subversive guitar hero to think of – but they were beginning to wonder where I disappeared to for whole afternoons at a time. I hadn’t said anything to Haisam either, but I think he had his suspicions, because my Honourable Egyptian always had suspicions about everything.