I was living in London then, and my parents flew across the Atlantic three or four times a year; my father’s bank had an office in the UK, and since my move to Britain he had taken an active interest in supervising the local staff, and came over for regular quick visits. My mother and I would spend the afternoons together while he worked, and then we would all meet for supper. Sometimes my parents came straight to London, but often enough I met them on the Continent so that we could all travel together. A few days before breakfast looking across the valley, my mother got sick in Paris.

I will not forget my parents’ arrival in Paris that time. My old friend Helen, my brother, Freddy, and I had been sitting for at least an hour in the bar at the hotel, waiting. When Helen and I left the bar (we left to see whether my parents had arrived yet, while Freddy went off to the bathroom), there they were. My father was at the front desk, discussing the rooms in his familiar way, and my mother was sitting nearby. The reality of my parents’ checking in that day is so strong that it overwhelms me: it seems more real to me than anything that has happened since, as though it was the last moment of my own life, as though the life I’ve been living since is on loan from someone else. My father was standing at the desk, talking to the man at reception. My mother was sitting on a gilded baroque chair. She sat slightly forward—at ease, but poised. She was wearing a pale gray wool suit with a soft off-white silk blouse, and you would never have guessed to look at her that she was at the far end of a long day’s travel: she looked as though she were newly dressed to go out to lunch. She had a small square bag, her little travel bag, which she always took on flights, next to her feet. She was wearing shoes with slight heels, and she had crossed her legs at the knee. She was looking up: her hair was set neatly in a twist at the back of her head, and her clear blue eyes were fixed on my father, and that skin of hers, that clear and soft skin pale as titanium, seemed to rest as gently on her high bones as it must have done the day she married him. One hand rested on her lap, holding a blue felt-tip pen, which she absentmindedly clicked open and closed. The other hung over the arm of the chair. She wore little sapphire earrings and a necklace of beaten gold, and on her hand her diamond ring fragmented the neutral hotel light into all its hidden colors.