And there I was aged thirteen, sitting on a bench in the Jardin Lecoq with the girl I thought I would love for ever, Emmanuelle. I had promised her a cream bun from the boulangerie, but when we went to beg some, my father had sent us away empty-handed and I was embarrassed. So I told her to wait for me on the bench. There I was, crossing an empty market square and slipping between the chestnut trees that lined its edge. I crept down a small street behind the orthodox church and was pleased to find what I had been looking for, the old woman who sold little squares of bergamot in paper bags. Each year she hid herself away in the cold months and wouldn’t be seen again until the smell of lavender and thyme filled our streets, until the hills were purple and blue and white with wildflowers. And there she was, sitting in a chair next to her little folding table, the table lined with small brown bags of bergamot sweets. Asleep. This was not the first time I had stolen from her.

And so there we sat, Emmanuelle and I, sharing the stolen bag of sweets, sucking each lemony amber square, daring each other not to chew, until they were reduced to sticky dots in the middle of our tongues.

And there I was, aged fourteen, standing over my dead father where he remained in his bed. Tante Huguette was there, or she was not there. She was in and out of the room, and for the most part we ignored each other and I pretended not to hear her when she told the priest that the child – I – was the weight she was cursed to bear. This was just after dawn, in winter, and I was trembling in a nightdress and shawl. Dead a few hours, but he had been gone for days, lost in delirium, drowning within his body and asking for my mother.

His eyes would not shut after death, so I weighted the lids down with two coins. I sat by my papa’s side and carefully studied his face, every pore and hair and wrinkle, trying to make an impression that might last because I knew he would soon be gone, kept in a crypt until the ground was soft enough for digging, and my only record of this face would be from memory. His cheeks and the sockets of his eyes had become sunken in; I wondered what it was in life that kept them so plump because now, only hours after death, its absence was obvious. He was missing a good many teeth. I put my hands on either side of his cheeks and held them there. A long and winding tweep emitted from his backside, like something falling.

Later, I washed him, all of him except for the parts he wouldn’t have wanted me to see, and covered him with a crisp white sheet, pulled only to the shoulders. On his knuckles and strong arms, on the insides of his wrists, the shiny white scars of a dozen oven burns, evidence of who he had been.