My son was driving me up the wall. I’d been trying to coax him out of bed for half an hour, with no success. We were meeting my mother at midday for brunch – a monthly ordeal – and I’d planned to dash over to Boulevard Haussmann beforehand to buy myself the pair of blood-red heels I’d been lusting after since the start of the sales. I wanted to wear them on Monday, for the meeting with the head of Hégémonie, the cosmetics group I’d been working for, night and day, for some fifteen years. I managed a team of twenty people, dedicated to the noble cause of innovation and advertising for a shampoo brand that eliminated up to a hundred per cent of dandruff – the ‘up to’ meant that one tester out of the two hundred in the trial had seen her tresses entirely rid of flakes. My great triumph had been to obtain authorization to make that claim, after a series of bitter battles with Hégémonie’s legal department. Crucial for sales, for my annual pay rise, my summer holiday with Louis – and for my new shoes.

Louis made a few groaning noises before deciding to cooperate. He pulled on a pair of skinny jeans with a too-low waist, splashed some water on his face, spent five minutes skilfully mussing up his hair, refused to wear a hat despite the freezing temperature outside, mumbled a few incomprehensible phrases I knew by heart (‘But why do I have to come with you?’), put on his shades, grabbed his skateboard – a dirty board, covered in tags, for which I had to buy competition wheels every five minutes – put on his red, ultra-light Uniqlo puffa jacket, grabbed a packet of chocolate biscuits while guzzling a Frube, just like when he was five, and finally pressed the lift button. I glanced at my watch. 10:21. Perfect; I’d still be able to carry out my precision-timed plan. I had factored in an extra hour, the ritual of getting my Sun King Louis out of bed being completely unpredictable.