In between tasks, he would replace my mother in the shop. He didn’t enjoy it. He preferred to spend his time in the café, or maybe not, maybe he just liked to potter around in the garden or knocking away at the buildings in the back yard. The smell of privet blossom in late spring and the crisp, clear sounds of dogs barking and trains passing in November, a sure sign of cold weather: yes, he had everything that makes the powerful, the influential and the writers in newspapers say, ‘Ah, but they’re happy after all.’

Sundays meant a proper wash, a visit to church and, in the afternoon, a few games of dominoes or a drive around the country. On Mondays, taking the bins out, on Wednesdays dealing with the wine and spirits rep, on Thursdays buying the grocery supplies, etc. Twice in summer they would close for a whole day, to go and see friends – a railwayman and his family – and to make the pilgrimage to Lisieux. In the morning they visited the Carmelite chapel, the diorama and the basilica, ending up at their usual restaurant for lunch. In the afternoon they went to Les Buissonnets and Trouville-Deauville. He turned up his trouser legs and went for a paddle with my mother, who bunched up her skirts. They stopped going when it went out of fashion.

54Every Sunday, a good meal.

From then on, his life was to remain unchanged. Certainty nonetheless that you can never be happier than you already are.

He’d had a nap that Sunday afternoon. I get a glimpse of him as he walks past the attic window. He is holding a book which he returns to the crate that the naval officer has left in storage. He chuckles as he catches sight of me in the courtyard. It’s a smutty book.

A photograph of me on my own, standing in the courtyard, with the row of outhouses on my right, the old alongside the new. At the time I may not have been concerned with aesthetics but I certainly knew how to make the most of myself: a narrow skirt hugs hips flattered by a three-quarter profile, shoulders thrown back to emphasize the bust, a lock of hair arranged on the forehead. I am smiling, so as to soften my features. I am sixteen years old. In the foreground the shadow of my father, who took the picture.

I would spend all day in my room, learning my lessons, playing records and reading. I came down only for meals. We ate in silence. At home I never laughed. I indulged in ‘sarcasm’. During this period, I broke away from the things that were closest to me. I was slowly drifting into middle-class circles, getting invited to surboums, teenage parties. To gain access you had to prove that you weren’t soppy, a difficult task. Now everything I 55liked seemed provincial, Luis Mariano, novels by Marie-Anne Desmarets and Daniel Gray, lipstick, and the doll I had won at the funfair, resting on my pillow in her sequined dress. Even the ideas coming from my own background seemed ridiculous, people’s preconceptions, for instance, ‘We’ll always need the police,’ or ‘You’re not a man till you do your national service.’ The whole world turned upside down.