Those last seconds on the grain barge, moments from my life reeled through my mind. And they were condensed. They defied time.

There I was, aged four, in a bed in a too-dark room. Shadows in the corners making the room smaller still. Calling, calling for Tante Huguette to come, to come. The good smells of stewed venison, of bread.

There I was, aged six. My father home for a whole month to visit. Just us two, working together, performing magic in a ceramic bowl. Weighing scales dusted with flour and the smooth passage of a hand-warmed wooden spoon against the bowl’s edge, and then the kneading on a kitchen counter greased with oil. My father pinched a wad of dough from the mixture and showed me how to stretch it, without it breaking, to at least the length of my forearm to ensure the kneading was done. A slow rise, he said, before we knock it back, will give us the most delicious taste. Everything in the room, everything in the world, flour-white.

There I was, aged seven, my unkempt hair snagging on branches as I picked my way through the forest behind our town, up the hill to a clearing where I could look down on the houses of Clermont and the volcanic-black cathedral at its centre, Notre-Dame de l’Assomption, where I could gain at least a little height on the hills that hemmed me in and dream of a place where the withering looks of my aunt couldn’t burn me. There I sat with my back against the trunk of a larch tree, picking bouquets of myrtille and saxifrage for my dead mother.

And there I was aged twelve, during the first of two happy years (and the only years) when my father actually lived with us in Clermont-Ferrand until he, too, less than three years after my grandmother, also died. Pneumonia. Fluid in the lungs. There I was, waiting for him to finish his dawn shift at the boulangerie, an airless brick building at the back of one of the grand hotels. There I was, watching him and his two companions at their work, their faces wet from the relentless heat of the three ovens, their white aprons like long skirts. One whole wall taken up by the three brick ovens, topped with stacks and stacks of wood. Another wall taken up by trays and copper pans, and cloth-lined, woven baskets as barracks to armies of hot baguettes. Racks of shining implements, copper and steel sieves, spoons, funnels, graters and spatulas. All hung neatly from nails. There was my father, turning the bread with a long wooden paddle while it baked. And I. Sitting on an upturned bucket next to a water tap coming out of the wall, wetting my finger with the drip, drip falling from its mouth. One of the other fellows was knocking back dough on a wooden table under shelves stacked with white sacks of flour. His back and neck shone and when he looked my way over his shoulder, he kept his eyes on me while his arms pumped the dough. He winked. I immediately crossed my arms over my chest and looked directly at my father, who was bent towards the oven.