Etienne had composed a new piece and I’d put some words to it. We began to play, but my heart wasn’t in it. I felt really feeble, as if I was holding a crankshaft rather than a musical instrument. The other two were writhing about all over the place and didn’t notice anything, because obviously they hadn’t had the benefit of the musical and aesthetic education that I now had. We finished the demo because we wanted to send it to a record company. What I was dreading was the possibility that they might talk about it at school. How would that make me look in front of Marie? I’d have cut my hand off rather than pick up an instrument in front of her. I’d told them it would be better to keep quiet about our musical mayhem, because people might get jealous. Etienne and Marcel didn’t really buy this because they wanted to do a concert at the school Christmas fair, just before the holidays.

“The thing is,” said Etienne, “there’s nothing better than music for pulling girls!”

When we left the workshop, it was completely dark and it had got cold too. The sky was sprinkled with stars. I thought that Marie was probably still grinding away at her cello and I almost felt like going to meet her after her music lesson. I told Etienne and Marcel that I had to revise some geometry, because the next day there was a test on cones, pyramids, spheres and that sort of thing.

“We don’t give a stuff about cones and pyramids,” said Marcel, “and one of these days we’re going to nick old Hopalong’s crutches and make flutes out of them. Then she won’t be able to bug us any more.”

Etienne burst out laughing.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, “it’s not funny to have to carry your dead baby around in your right leg.”