I read ‘proper’ literature and copied out verses and sentences which I thought expressed the state of my ‘soul’ and the ‘elusive’ quality of my life, like, ‘Happiness is a god who walks empty-handed’ (Henri de Régnier).

My father became what was known as a simple man, modest, a good man. He no longer dared to tell me stories about his childhood. I stopped talking to him about school. Besides Latin (as a boy he had served mass), my lessons were incomprehensible to him, but unlike my mother he didn’t pretend to take an interest. He got cross when I criticized the curriculum or complained that I had too much work. He didn’t like the words ‘prof’, or ‘dirlo’, or even ‘bouquin’.6 And the constant fear or maybe desire that I would never make it.

It annoyed him to see me studying all day and he blamed the books for my bad moods and the sullen expression on my face. The light under my door at night gave him cause to say that I was ruining my health. Study was the price one had to pay to get a decent job and avoid ending up with a factory worker. But the fact that I actually enjoyed learning was suspicious. Missing out on life in the bloom of youth. Sometimes he seemed to think I was unhappy.

In front of the family and customers, he was 56embarrassed, almost ashamed by the fact that I still wasn’t earning a living at the age of seventeen. All the other girls my age had jobs in offices or factories, or else worked in their parents’ shop. He was afraid people would think me idle, afraid too he would come across as a show-off. He often said by way of an apology: ‘You know, we didn’t force her, she had it in her.’ He used to say I was a good learner, never a good worker. Work was only ever done with your hands.

For him, studying had nothing to do with ordinary life. He never washed the lettuce more than once, and we often found slugs in the salad. He was scandalized when, after learning hygienics in troisième,7 I suggested that we change the water several times. On another occasion he was dumbfounded to hear me speak English with a hitchhiker who had been given a lift by one of the customers. The fact that I had learnt a foreign language at school, without ever visiting the country, was beyond his comprehension.

During this period, he would occasionally fly into a terrible rage which twisted his features into a rictus of hate. My mother and I were very close at that time. It was all about monthly pains, beauty products, choosing the right bra. She took me shopping in the rue du Gros-Horloge in Rouen and then we went to the Périer tearooms, where we ate pastries with silver forks. She 57wanted to use the same expressions as me – ‘flirt’, ‘être un crack’,8 etc. We didn’t need him.