‘You can speak to him; we’ll be playing the recording to him.’

‘Oh . . . fine. My dear Louis, I wish you strength. You have the resources within you. And you got twenty out of twenty on your last test; you can be proud of yourself.’

Aside from me: Madame Ernest’s encouragement is a bit crap, isn’t it? She sounds like Master Yoda on a bad day.

‘Thank you, Madame Ernest. I’m sure Louis will be very touched. But . . . I have a favour to ask you. For Louis and for all the other sick children around the world. I’d be grateful if you would agree.’

‘I’ll be delighted to help you if I can.’

‘Good. So I’ll explain. This is a bit awkward, so please don’t be angry with me. There’s a new social network challenge, called the boob challenge. It’s for a good cause. It involves touching the breasts of different women to raise money for research into deep comas.’

‘You’re joking, I presume?’

‘Not at all. I’m sure you’re already seen those campaigns where celebrities pose bare-breasted to raise money for cancer research . . .’

‘Yes, I think so . . .’

‘Well, it’s the same principle. The faces are pixelated, of course. It’s all anonymous. For my contribution – to do my bit – my I’ve agreed to touch the breasts of everyone who’s important to Louis. I’d very much like to touch your breasts, Madame Ernest.’

Aside, from me: Mum is almost sobbing as she says all that. She’s amazing, my mother.

The scene ended in an extraordinary way. After the inevitable objections of my favourite maths teacher, Mum played Madame Ernest a video showing her touching the breasts

of various women: my grandmother, of course, but also Charlotte, our favourite nurse, and Françoise, our cleaner. Then Madame Ernest finally said yes. Mum’s hand moved towards her breast . . . and stopped a few centimetres from the finishing line. Such a pity.

Then, Mum straightened up, looked Madame Ernest in the eye and told her the whole truth about my notebook, and her crazy promise. She asked her if she still consented, now that she knew what it was all about. Of course, Madame Ernest said no, because it was her body, her choice, her right, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, what did Mum expect? OK, so it wasn’t very cool to do a thing like that to Madame Ernest without telling her the real reason, but Mum had come up with such a brilliant idea!