The bell rang and that brought me back down to earth.

I looked out for Marie, feeling desperately anxious. I bumped into Marcel and Etienne, who were on their way to a different class. I’d honestly thought that they would be in a strop with me for ever and would never speak to me again, but in fact they just asked me how my hand was. The cancellation of the concert hadn’t bothered them too much, because around that time their father had tried to strangle their mother with a string from Etienne’s bass guitar and in self-defence their mother had broken Marcel’s drumsticks over her husband’s head. It was all-out war, and the atmosphere was post-nuclear.

In class, I noticed that the maths teacher was looking really pretty, with a bow in her hair, which showed she was taking a new interest in her personal appearance. She still limped, but you didn’t notice it so much because her face was nicer to look at. Marie wasn’t there, and the worst possible thoughts went through my mind. Perhaps they’d already put her, against her will, in the special college for the blind.

The teacher wished us a happy new year, and said she hoped that it would bring us everything we wanted. For the first time ever, those words actually meant something specific to me. Marie still hadn’t arrived and I was getting seriously worried. We made a start on an exercise. It was a right pain in the backside:

Multiply out and simplify:

A = 3(x + 1) + (x + 2) (x – 3).

I couldn’t get my head around it. I will always wonder why mathematicians are so obsessed with multiplying out if they then want to go straight ahead and simplify. I mean, get real.

We all had our heads down, when there was a knock on the door and Marie came in. And yes, I could see straight away that something had changed. She apologized for being late and took three careful steps to the teacher’s desk to hand in a late note, planting her feet flat on the floor, a bit like an astronaut. She looked as though she was staring, but I knew that her eyes were empty. Watching her feet, I could see that she was concentrating on taking very regular steps. She sat down calmly and got her things out in the normal way, except there was nothing normal about it. I didn’t know what to say to her and her composure put the wind up me – a radioactive wind, that’s what I thought at the time. While the others were slogging away, she whispered to me, “Quick, tell me what we’re supposed to do.”

“Multiply out and simplify: A = 3 (x + 1) + (x + 2) (x – 3)” I muttered as quietly as possible.

“OK. Get on with your work.”