I decided to walk home, persuaded that the fresh air would do me good after breathing the stale, recycled hospital air. After a few hundred metres in the heavy traffic of a Parisian Sunday evening, I began to think about the lorry driver who had turned my life upside down. Police officers had come to talk to me, but I was in such a state that the doctors had told them to leave me in peace. But they’d replied that I was going to have to give a statement. They came back later, and I talked to them for around ten minutes. I had to describe what I’d seen of the collision, which was not a lot. But I wanted justice to be done and I began to focus my thirst for revenge on the lorry driver. The officers were understanding and tempered my outbursts demanding life imprisonment, assuring me that the investigation was under way, that a number of witnesses had been able to describe the scene precisely, that it had been recorded by the C.C.T.V. cameras and they had the film, and that of course justice would be done. All the same, one of them had quietly said that it had been an accident, that I should know that the driver was a woman, a mother of two young children, and that she too was devastated, in shock, and that I might not like the findings of the investigation. All the witness statements concurred: it seemed fairly clear that Louis had lost control of his skateboard, and that, despite the driver’s best efforts, she had not been able to avoid him. The driver’s liability would probably prove negligible. Then I began to rant against the incompetence of the police, screaming that it couldn’t have happened as they said, that my son hadn’t in any way been at fault in all this, that the driver was a manipulative bitch if she’d got them to believe that she wasn’t to blame, that they themselves, those two policemen, were complete idiots, and other expletives that it’s difficult for me to transcribe in hindsight. When I leapt up, brandishing an angry fist at them, Sophie Davant and a nursing assistant had come into the room and restrained me, then I crumpled into the arms of the TV-presenter lookalike and on to the cold, green lino floor, racked with frantic sobs. The officers had said that they’d forget my behaviour and what I’d said, wished me strength, and left. I had not only lost my son’s future, I’d also lost my dignity. I’d learned that the lorry driver was a woman, a mother too, and I’d wished the worst on her, even though I knew nothing of her life.

I shook my head as I carried on walking towards the Saint-Martin canal. Another fifteen minutes and I’d be home. Our home. Alone.