A few days before Christmas, Madame and I went for a stroll along the Boulevard Beaumarchais, which, for the season, had been converted into an outdoor market, lined with dozens of little rough-wood baraques. All the things you could buy. Or even just touch. Chocolate perfumed with orange or lavender, bronze ornaments, silks from China or just a good pair of bootlaces. Madame and I made up a game where, at one shed or another, we both guessed at items we believed the other would choose to possess, if we could only choose one, then revealed our guesses. Madame chose correctly for me almost every time. She bought me sticky sweets that came in a cardboard funnel, and I ate every one of them because all morning, the taste of something like stale coffee had lingered on my tongue and I wanted rid of it.

We came to a wall of stacked birdcages, right there in the street. Each cage vibrated with tiny, delicate songbirds and their fragile, perfectly formed heads ticked like the hands of a hundred clocks. They had beaks of vibrant blue and yellow and orange. Madame’s favourite was the yellow canary. I preferred the house finches, their muted, pastel feathers untidy and their movements less mechanical than those of the other birds. I watched them for such a long time that Madame offered to buy me one.

‘What would I do with a bird?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think one does anything with a bird. Admire it? Set it free and see if it returns?’

‘I don’t know how to care for it.’

‘I shouldn’t think there’s much to it. Feed it some seeds every once in a while; make sure it has clean water to drink. It could be a companion to you.’

‘A bird as a companion.’

Madame grasped my hand then. ‘You’re not happy here anymore. I keep expecting that you’re going to tell me you wish to return home.’

I couldn’t speak. All the vile things I had done. A hot ache steamed behind my eyes.

‘Let me buy you the bird,’ she said, and raised her arm stiffly to get the attention of the vendor. In that moment, a humidity settled over me and nausea swelled in the bottom of my stomach. I took a few steps towards a cafe table and sat, heavily, and slowed my breathing. Concentrated very hard on not vomiting.

Determined to possess the bird, Madame hadn’t noticed that I’d sat down, and when she realized I was no longer standing next to her, she pivoted back and forth like a lost child.

‘Here,’ I said, ‘I’m here.’ My mouth was dangerously full of saliva and my guts rolled.

‘Ah,’ she said, working her way past a pair of men who stared and pointed at a cage of tuft-headed cardinals. She beckoned with her small, gloved hand. ‘Quickly now, we need to choose a colour. I was considering the grey-and-violet one, but I’m not so sure. It has a queer look.’