Then came my teens. My anxieties, my embarrassment, my aching desire to fit in, to be a slave like everyone else to the fashion brands, American princes and princesses, stereotyped beauty. I was fed up with shapeless jumpers with a picture of Che Guevara on them, having Mum cut my hair, tatty trainers, rejection of the capitalist world. I hated the alternative lifestyle that prevented me from being accepted by the cool girls at school, made me a laughing-stock among the boys of my age, so sexy in their Nike Air Jordans, baggy Poivre Blanc sweaters and Adidas tracksuit bottoms, unzipped at the ankles.

I didn’t understand my mother’s wholesale rejection of all that; I resented her for denying me a normal life. So I started loathing her violently, and automatically doing the opposite of what she wanted for me. I hated her lanky, pipe-cleaner look, her bandy legs in her loose-fitting, worn jeans, the way she smoked her cigarettes, holding them between her thumb and forefinger, her ashen hair clipped back in that eternal tone-on-tone grip, her cowboy whistles, her hard expression and her disparaging words, her disapproval of my lifestyle. I did my utmost to become everything she abhorred. She saw me as an irresponsible mother, wasting the best years of my life pursuing my career, obsessed with the sales figures of a multinational corporation that had no qualms about outsourcing overseas and selling products that were purely frivolous.

The only bond we still have is Louis. Louis has always been allowed to see his grandmother whenever he wants to. Always. A matter of principle, of roots. And the three of us have brunch together once a month. Which is what we were supposed to have been doing on that fateful Saturday, 7 January.

After my long and intense night of thinking, I finally decided to accept my lot. My mother was there, with me, 10,000 kilometres from Paris. And I’d promised Louis I’d carry out what was written in his little Book of Wonders, to the letter.

He’d drawn up a detailed list of things he wanted to experience in Japan, the title of which said it all:

Have a wild day in Tokyo with the person I love more than anyone else in the world (Mum, for the time being).