I’d hesitated for a long time before agreeing to Marie’s proposal. I thought there might be something fishy about it. I still wasn’t entirely sure I could trust her, with her oh-so-white socks, her stratospheric IQ and her cello, which seemed like a living creature that was difficult to tame – while I made do with my old busted guitar and whatever sound I could get out of it. We weren’t at all in the same league, Marie and me. I wasn’t a match for her and I couldn’t see what she could possibly find interesting about me. I often felt like a weird little animal, shrivelled up and insignificant, being studied under a scientist’s microscope.

I began to change my mind the day I found this, written on a piece of paper in my pencil case:

In May 1901, Panhard and Levassor were the first company to introduce an engine without a cylinder head gasket, as well as a three-point engine suspension system.

To tell the truth I was totally speechless, because despite trawling through the Krebs manual every evening, I hadn’t been able to find that information. That evening I asked Dad and he confirmed it was right, but I refused to tell him where I’d got the answer, because I have my pride.

The next day I was still hesitating and thinking it over when the history teacher asked me, in front of the whole class, “So, Victor, can you tell me what Gutenberg invented?”

I didn’t stop to think, which is generally a bad mistake in life.

“The copier!” I answered. That exclamation mark shows how sure of myself I felt and how pleased I was with my answer. Of course everyone burst out laughing, all the more so because it was a while since I’d been held up for ridicule. I’d got out of the habit of it too. I thought the teacher was going to tear a strip off me, but it was even worse than that because she just asked, “Laser or inkjet?”

The first few weeks hadn’t been easy. I had to dig out all my old papers, which were scrunched up in balls in the waste bin. I asked Dad for the iron and he was amazed to see me flattening the cosines, smoothing out the three-dimensional diagrams, pressing the graphs and then hanging the papers up on the clothes line in the kitchen.