Dabbing her eyes, she sobbed. I took hold of her hands to try and calm her down and was moved in turn by her tears. Suddenly, as if she could no longer bear to carry the burden of it alone, she began to tell me her story.

‘Oh! … Monsieur … if only you knew what misery … what great misery I am in … I used to be happy … I used to have a house … back at home … but I can’t … I can’t go back to it. I will not go back. It’s just too hard for me.

I have a son. And all this is about him! My son! Oh, children have no idea, do they! There’s so little time to really live! And do you know, I’m not even sure I’d recognize him now! I loved him so much even before he was born when I could feel him stirring inside my own body. And so much afterwards! How I loved him, adored him, cherished him. If you knew how many nights I spent watching as he slept, thinking about him. I loved him to distraction. When he was eight, his father sent him away to prep school. That was the end. He was no longer mine. Oh, my God! He was allowed home on Sundays, that’s all. After that he went to boarding school in Paris. He was allowed home no more than four times a year. So every time I was amazed at how much he had changed. I could always see how much he’d grown but I never saw him growing! I was robbed of his childhood, of his trust and of the tenderness which he could always have felt towards me. All the joy of seeing him develop, of growing into a young man, all that was taken away from me. Imagine, seeing your own son four times a year! Every time he visited he was a different person. His body, his appearance, his movements, his voice, his laugh, none of them was ever the same. He was no longer mine. Children grow so quickly and when you’re not there to see them it’s just so terribly sad … you can never have that back. One year he arrived with down on his cheeks! My son! I was so stunned, so sad that … it’s unbelievable … but I hardly dared give him a kiss! Was this really my dear, my darling little baby that I’d dandled in napkins on my knee, who had drunk my milk with his greedy little lips? Was my baby this great dark-haired chap who couldn’t snuggle up to me any more, who seemed to love me mainly out of duty, who called me ‘Mother’ and kissed me formally on the forehead, when all I wanted to do was enfold him in my arms?