A backdrop of water towers, regional train stations, abandoned football fields, a Lidl carpark, ugly concrete, patchy grass, the stinking, muddy banks of the Loire river, all of it bathed in a golden light. The taxi came to pick me up in Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, we drove past Camélinat stadium, the railway workers’ estate, avenue Lénine, a bar called La Loco, we took route de la Levée, we drove along the Loire, the river was low, it was a gray day, we went past Leclerc, it has a McDonald's drive-thru now, we took the road up through the village, the driver dropped me off outside the house. My dad in front of the TV, the chimney full of ash, the nurse coming by to give him his Buprenorphine and whatever else he takes, the little bottles of Label 5 he buries at the bottom of the bin before I get there, the broken radiators, the cold tiles, the crumbling bathroom, the dust covering everything. Sometimes I love Montlouis because of how ugly it is, sometimes I just hate it.

When I was a child, Montlouis was the house opposite, where my grandparents lived. The big house, we used to call it. There was the tennis court, the swimming pool, the raspberry and redcurrant bushes, the hunting lodges, the wooden garage for bikes, the Renault 4, the Renault 16, the lunches, the dinners, the small dining room, the large dining room, the bedrooms named after colors, the laundry room, the huge cupboard underneath the living room staircase with the wooden tennis rackets, some in their cases, some warped by time, the records, the old toys, the Jules Verne books in the library upstairs, Madame D., the maid who came in to clean in the morning and serve meals, limping because she had polio, speaking with a Belfort accent. My grandparents died, the house was sold, my dad doesn't have a cent to his name, for fifteen years he's been living on his own in the house where the cook used to live, he has no regrets. Before, he used to watch TV and smoke. Now he's hooked up to an oxygen tank all the time, he's quit.