In December, five months after the ruling in August, I finally saw the expert psychiatrist. The person who's supposed to tell the judge what to think. I saw Doctor A. in an office building near Gare de Lyon, an office he was probably paying a daily fee to rent because his own clinic was based somewhere in Aix, or Avignon, I always get them mixed up. I took a bus there, my scooter had been stolen but I didn't give a shit, I wasn't paying the insurance anymore anyway. He was a nice little man, the expert, he spoke with an accent from the south. He laughed. He said, Of course you love Paul, of course Paul loves you, of course you're not crazy, of course this of course that, he laughed and laughed, he said this kind of thing happens all the time. Though it's usually the other way round, it's usually the father who winds up having these kinds of problems, especially if he turns out to be a fag. He said he'd write up his report, of course, but it wouldn't make much difference. He said there wasn't much anyone could do now, if Laurent insisted on continuing this violence, this chaos he was creating for him and his son, he said it wouldn't be easy for Paul of course, living in a fishbowl, he shrugged his shoulders, he said I shouldn't give up, it could take years and even then, there's just no way of knowing.

18