That was another of her specialties: she could sniff out a lie at once, he’d experienced it often enough when he was a child to remember very precisely. When she said: “Tell me that to my face so I can see!” you had to be careful, because the smallest sign of bad faith, the slightest hint of a lie or even a half-truth would be identified, denounced and stamped out. This wasn’t the first time she’d asked him to repeat a confession, after merely listening to him with ­lowered gaze the first time. She wouldn’t show her own feelings but ask him to start over, while she glared at him.

Because he was putting his entire soul into his account of the past few months, he realized that he’d won now, and he decided to spare his mother the problems with Sébastien, hoping she wouldn’t realize that he was hiding something. Why upset her with a situation when he himself couldn’t see all its implications and all its consequences?

He had smoked six or seven cigarettes and his throat was burning.

“I wouldn’t mind something to drink but it’s too late for coffee and I guess you wouldn’t have beer . . .”

“What do you mean, I wouldn’t have beer? Go look in the fridge . . .”

When he came back with a nice cold Heineken she was the one who looked nervous.

“Now I’ve got something to tell you . . . “

“And on top of everything else he’s married! Mamma, is this really you?”

“You’re the last person to be preaching, young man!”

“I’m not preaching, I’m just surprised! Don’t attack me before I even say anything!”

Rose had made her own confession, almost clinging to Sébastien’s foot. She had kept a close watch on Mathieu’s reactions as she spoke, interrupting herself when he ­started—this was the first time he’d ever heard a candid ­reference to his mother’s sex life and he couldn’t hide his amazement—stumbling over the words she found difficult, the ones with a loaded meaning that exploded between them like a small bomb, hesitating between letting doubt persist or telling him outright that it wasn’t a platonic ­relationship . . . In the end she too told him everything, but she wasn’t sure that she felt relieved.

Since the death of Mathieu’s father fifteen years earlier, the question of other men had never come up. Rose had had several “pals” whom Mathieu had hated, persecuting them with well-aimed kicks and repeated hysterics until they went away, disgusted at the spoiled brat who wouldn’t let anyone near his mother, but they’d never talked about them openly. Married very young, Mathieu had chosen to forget about his mother’s escapades, though she was a healthy woman, still very beautiful and desirable, and men had always hovered around her, even when his father was still alive. And now he was picturing her in an enticing ­negligée on Saturday morning, waiting for the phone to ring, and then the doorbell . . .