I come to Montlouis to get away from everything. Me, my dad, each at the opposite end of the house, we hardly speak to each other, we don't sit at the table together, we bump into each other in the kitchen when we make our sandwiches and instant noodles, me putting a bit of ham inside a folded-up slice of white bread, him drowning his noodles in Tabasco. I come here to see him too, of course, even though I don't tell him that, even though we never talk about it. Two cats pretending to ignore each other, meeting in the middle of the night. You have to get used to this peculiar language, and whenever I bring girls over, even though I warn them, they're still a bit shocked, they still think we're crazy, and often they leave me soon after. But I think this is the way everyone should love. There are still a lot of Paul's things here, his bike, his room, his dress-up clothes, his toys. At first it felt like they belonged to a dead person, but now it's fine, I've gotten used to them.

I took out the big black leather satchel with my mom's book of modeling shots inside. I always used to think she looked too made up, too sexual in photos from before she was my mother, it made me a bit uncomfortable. I flick through the pages of the books and her beauty smacks me across the face. Her beauty and her power. I guess it would have taken strength to be around her, it would have taken guts, maybe my dad didn't always have it in him. I take out a photo, I show it to my dad and say, OK Dad, maybe your life right now, well . . . but look at her, not everyone can say they had someone like that in their life. Yes, he says. Then, I don't know why, but I say, It can't have been easy to love her. I feel him looking at me, stern. No, he says. He goes back to reading his book, I put the photos away. The good thing about opium, about heroin, is that when you're really into it, you don't want to fuck anymore, you can't even get hard, you don't give a shit. Why did he do drugs? G. asked me one day, much later. He did drugs because he did drugs.