All this was complicated by two things. The first was loneliness. In bed at night I’d hold my own hand for comfort when falling asleep. Living alone signified adulthood, but I missed the noises gusting about share houses: voices and music, enormous sneezes, feet thumping down stairs. Loneliness was shameful. The thing to do was to transform it into solitude – but how? Solitude was lofty and literary, the realm of men and exceptional women. I’d written my undergraduate thesis on one of those women. Simone de Beauvoir was philosophy, Paris, politics, progress. I wanted to be her. I wanted her life. She was Bold, Intelligent Woman. When she wasn’t much older than I, de Beauvoir accepted a teaching post in Marseille. She had no friends there and spent her weekends striding about the rocky hills behind the town. When colleagues said that she risked being raped, she dismissed their warnings as ‘a mere spinsterish obsession’. She wrote, ‘there were certain things, such as accidents, serious illnesses or rape, which simply could not happen to me’.

The Promenade du Peyrou ran from one end of le centre historique. I returned to that esplanade often – it gave me Australia’s large sky. There were views over the city and of hills slumped on the horizon. Long walks – stride, stride – carried me to the outskirts of Montpellier, but the hills remained distant. Passing villas submerged in discretion, I fought the wish for someone to talk to. Adalbert had returned to the West Berlin record store where he worked, which left Dieter, too, on his own. But Dieter was taking a linguistics unit at the university and was supplied with student friends. He’d mentioned a gay club as well – he didn’t need my company, and I was too ashamed to ask for his. Minna had given me her address, but I was squeamish about intruding on the life of couples. I thought of it as solemn, ceremonial, fused. My experience of it had been nothing of the kind, but I believed that other people had more talent or fewer doubts.

The other thing on my mind was a discovery I’d made: my apartment was cold. My street was a cobblestoned crevice, and the building across the way was taller than mine. Between four in the afternoon and half-past seven in the morning my windows were black. The sun conducted itself like a timid visitor, entering my rooms hesitantly and fleeing in haste. There was a heater, fired by a hefty blue gas cylinder that Monsieur Laval had promised to replace when it ran out. He set up the heater in the doorway between the two rooms, saying that it would heat the whole apartment. After ten days of heating the whole apartment the cylinder was empty, and I tried to ring Monsieur Laval. I returned again and again to the phone box. Finally, he answered and told me that he’d replace the cylinder at the end of the month.