“No, not at all, no more than thirty centimetres by thirty! It was just a small Pollock!” said her father.

A square pollock for three million, this was beginning to seem a little fishy to me. Marie was still laughing. I discreetly checked my flies, but no, they weren’t undone.

“Personally, I like the black and white Pollocks best,” said Marie’s father.

“That’s a variety I’ve never tried! Do you cook them the same way?”

Marie leant towards me and whispered in my ear. I pretended to take no notice.

How could I have known that Pollock, first name Jackson, was a painter? What kind of a name is that? Mr Pollock… I wanted to laugh, but I managed to keep a straight face. At last Marie’s mother ceremoniously brought in the dessert, in a big bowl. It was another Italian dish, and it deserved a compliment.

“Wow! Kamasutra! Thank you, that’s one of my favourite desserts!”

I held out my plate, with a massive smile of appreciation.

They were totally bewildered. There was no doubt about that: I was watching them out of the corner of my eye.

“Ka— what did you say?” asked Marie, speaking slowly and clearly.

“You know, kamasutra, the Italian dessert, of course. Are we going to eat it or send it off to a museum?”

“OK, I’ve got it,” said Marie’s father. “Do you mean tiramisu?”

“Exactly,” I confirmed. “Tiramisu.”

There was a pause for reflection. The atmosphere was exceptionally exquisite.

On the whole, I think I made an excellent impression.

All the same, my night ended with a really toxic nightmare. I was fishing in a very calm river. Suddenly, there was something pulling on the end of my line. So I reeled it in as hard as I could and at last I hauled a sort of floppy, slimy catfish out of the water and onto the vivid green grass. It had a menacing expression that left me with an uncomfortable feeling when I woke up. Yet there wasn’t anything particularly to fear about the day ahead: I was going to meet Marie at the funfair in front of the ticket booth for the Haunted House, and later the Metro were coming for a rehearsal, to put the final touches to the concert they refused to give up on. Dad was a bit disappointed because the day before he’d fine-tuned the Panhard to within an inch of its life, so that he could take part in a meet for cars that are on the verge of extinction. He’d been hoping to take me along, but he understood that for once I had other priorities. So he advised me to go and have a shave.

As I made my way to the fair, I thought about how I could possibly get out of the concert. Of course, I was still a fan of rock music, with its hyperactive freaks thrashing around and blasting out their massive decibels. But it was difficult to ignore the fact that it was not in the same league as the delicate, purposeful music that Marie played, reading the notes better than I could read words.