But we made love with particular tenderness that night. It wasn’t the ultimate ecstasy, all fanfares and a technicolour finale, but a minor ceremony marked by attentiveness and emotion and restraint. We admitted our feelings of ­helplessness through caresses that were almost timid, and kisses that were far from feverish. I felt like a teenager; I wished I could prolong that moment to the end of time, like the first times we’d made love; I wished the entire world could be a bed filled with tenderness, with cool sheets and with love-making that brought rest, not exhaustion.

Of course I didn’t sleep at all that night, or hardly, and my students suffered the consequences. I think I was actually pretty rotten to them, for the first time ever: rather than admit that I hadn’t got my work done that weekend, I ­delivered a tirade against thoughtless students who don’t give a damn not only about what they’re being taught, but also about their teachers, whom they insult by turning in garbage assignments. But maybe I was on target after all, because they didn’t react.

I threw their papers in the air, telling them to do them over for tomorrow. That got reactions. And ended badly. Now I had three dozen students against me, and it was only October!

“What upsets me most is, I feel as if I’ve been wasting my time, and that really pisses me off!”

Mélène hadn’t laughed. On the contrary, she’d heard me out with great seriousness, even holding back her fury when I described the visit from Luc, whom she loathed, and merely smiling at my misadventures with Sébastien. I told her everything: the jigsaw, the doggy, the dinner disaster, the anxiety I’d felt because of a four-year-old child who had to be kept busy for hours, the big innocent eyes in search of affection or approval and, most of all, the impression that I was wasting my time because I’d never wanted anything like that and because I’d never been interested in children.