“Did you have a pet when you were little, Dad?”

“When I was twelve, my father brought back a puppy that one of his clients wanted to get shot of… Then, by the time I met your mother, he was a very old dog. Animals weren’t really your mother’s thing, you know … especially old ones… I had to choose between him and her…”

“And then she was the one who got shot of you.”

So he must understand about the love of animals, and animal rescue.

That evening, I remembered to revise my maths, but it was harder than usual, because I hadn’t gone over the problem with Marie in the afternoon.

ABC is a triangle and F is the translation that maps A to B. I is the midpoint of AC. D and J are the respective images of C and I after translation F. Prove that J is the midpoint of BD.

The three stars in the book were to show the level of difficulty. I struggled for quite a while, and tried not to lose heart, because that certainly wouldn’t have impressed Marie. She never gave up with her cello, although it’s a very difficult and obstinate instrument. And also I didn’t want to end up cutting out chicken breasts, especially the ones on the left. I drew a slightly strange diagram with arrows going everywhere and I proved as best I could what they were asking me to prove.

There was also a poem to learn by heart. It was a very sad poem that an old poet had written when he was about to die. It began, “I am nothing but bones, a skeleton’s double,” and it finished, “Farewell, dear companions, farewell, my dear friends, I shall go first to prepare you the way.” Before, I really hadn’t liked poetry and I’d never managed to learn the poems the teachers gave us. It always seemed to me that people who made things extra difficult for themselves when they wrote must be really screwed up. But I thought this poem was beautiful. It reminded me of my poor blackbird, who was in a similar predicament, and also of the music that Marie played, which was composed in the same period as the poem. It must have been a very sad time, when people went blind for no good reason. Nothing like the time of the musketeers. I went to find Dad, so that I could recite the poem to him. I took great pains to say the last line in a very poignant way, closing my eyes as if it was I who was dying.

“What cheery stuff they’re teaching you!” he said. “That poet Ronsard’s got a nerve, writing all those centuries ago and still making us feel depressed even now!”