Her favourites praised her to the skies, while those she ignored dragged her name through the mud.

As for Mathieu, he thought she was a total fool.

In fact, he’d been amazed that she had called: they never hit it off and she’d never forgive him for the blasé look he always sported at the agency. Incapable of any sort of flattery, at auditions Mathieu adopted a behaviour that he considered simply businesslike, but which the secretaries at talent agencies, accustomed to something very different, interpreted as arrogance or indifference.

So he hadn’t fallen into Francine’s arms when he walked through the door, or pecked her cheeks or paid her a ­compliment, he didn’t ask for the name of the product he’d be asked to promote, or how many guys had been called or what she thought his chances were. He just gave her a polite hello and his name, then went and sat at the other end of the waiting room, near a fellow he saw at all the auditions, who wasn’t too unbearable.

That was when he learned that a well-known brewery was looking for new faces to sing at the top of their lungs in a super-macho commercial set in a hunting lodge, an ­incredibly vapid slogan that would probably be a catch phrase for a few months: “Bag yourself a real one!” He had looked around him, discouraged. All the other guys were hefty and athletic-looking; next to them he looked like a slender Prince Charming from a kindergarten fairy tale.

Had Francine Beaupré been mocking him when she’d called? Or had she just made a mistake? He’d almost got up, taken his raincoat and left, but then he’d changed his mind. He’d hang in till the bitter end. He had nothing to lose in any case. A contact’s a contact. If the director didn’t need him for the beer commercial, maybe he’d remember him for something else, some other day . . .

So he’d taken refuge in his thoughts, which had been rather glum these past few days, while he waited for his call.

Mathieu had been devastated by the weekend with Sébastien and Jean-Marc. He felt responsible for its failure and annoyed with himself because he hadn’t been able to make them like each other. No, that wasn’t quite right. Sébastien had liked Jean-Marc. He’d said he was “nice” and “funny,” even said he wanted to see him again. But Jean-Marc?