Well, I’m feeling quite light-headed at the thought of all these lives opening up before me. The future is wide open. I could go back to France to work with Madame Fò, wait for grandchildren to arrive and take them to the park where I’ll watch them climb on the monkey bars . . . Or, like an uprooted plant, tossed about by the wind, make my way from one fireworks display to another until I’m all shrivelled up and for whatever reason am no longer able to continue. Or I could do as my mother did, and pretend to be busy, buy lots of useless stuff, play with it, grow bored with it, throw it away, return it, resell it — always in a hurry because the shops are about to close . . . Or else take my father’s approach, stop looking after myself and die, drowning in the rose pink sky at the end of a day like this one . . . Or I could simply live for myself and for the joy of seeing myself alive.

We’ll see: let’s just say that for the time being, I’m lying fallow . . .

I’ve come back to the only place in the world where people were expecting me, to Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman. I’ve settled into the hotel where my life went off the rails, the way the diamond in a record player jumps from one groove to another, from a mellow song to a ghastly jingle. Unlike the little fireworks collector’s palace, the Belvedere, this place hasn’t changed a bit.

These days, what I love to do more than anything is slide my chair as close as possible to the window looking out over the bay. I can stay there for hours, contemplating the perfect tableau of colours composed by the pink carpet of my room, the blond wood of the window framing the bay, and the sun like an orange ball drowning in the blue light . . . and with that I’m replete.

It’s time to leave now, before it gets too dark. I’ve had to wait for nightfall because it’s quite a drive out to Petroleum Cemetery and DNA doesn’t cope well with the heat now that he’s getting on.

The way things turned out, my husband and I knew each other for such a short time, and it was so long ago. But I think he would have liked the woman I’ve become. I’ve arranged a fireworks display for this evening out at the cemetery, just for the two of us. I didn’t stint. I’ve chosen sparkly starbursts and bombettes that will light up the desert sky with enormous, orange-centred pink chrysanthemums.

And here’s a little story to finish.