There were many things that surprised me about Marie and filled me with admiration. We were both very worried that a teacher might ask her to read something out loud. To try and avoid that, I always put up my hand to volunteer for any reading. The others could think what they liked about me, I didn’t care. So I kept sticking my hand up as though my life depended on it, which it almost did. But one day the teacher wanted us to read a really difficult poem by a very young poet called Rimbaud who kept running away from home and then suddenly stopped writing and went to some place in Africa to be an arms dealer. He ended up back in France and had a leg amputated. Not the sort of thing that makes a career as a poet seem very appealing…

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the teacher asked Marie to read the poem. Disaster. It would all be over. I felt so dreadful that I could feel myself going as white as the sheet of paper on my desk, with its margins, lines, ring holes and all. What could I do? I got ready to create a diversion by falling off my chair and rolling around on the floor, throwing my dignity to the wind. But I didn’t need to, because straight away, without turning a hair, Marie began to reel off the poem without tripping up once. Yet again I wondered whether she’d been making a complete fool of me right from the start. How else could she have rattled off all those mystifying verses, without missing a beat, like a recording? Marie was brilliant at cello and loved wisdom, but surely even she couldn’t do everything.

Later, in the playground, while we were waiting for lunch, I asked her if her sight was improving.

“Are you asking me that because of the poem? That’s way off the mark. For a start, Arthur Rimbaud is my favourite poet. And secondly, I know hundreds of poems by heart. I was just lucky, that’s all.”

“But honestly, dear Marie, how on earth can you cram so much stuff inside your brain? It’s ridiculous!”

She gave me a gentle smile. I think it was because of the “dear Marie”. It just came out, I hadn’t given it any thought. It almost felt as momentous as a marriage proposal.

“A few years ago I was ill for several months,” she said. “It was when my eyes started to go wrong. I couldn’t go to school, so I was able to learn lots of things. I learnt the piano too, to pass the time.”

“All on your own?”

“It’s not that difficult. You just have to put your fingers in the right places, that’s all. And anyway, the piano is only a hobby. I don’t take it seriously.”