Visibly moved, she got up and left the living room. Mathieu thought it was all over now. Even here, he would find no response, no consolation. He knelt on the rug beside Sébastien and laid his forehead next to his son’s head. Rose came back almost immediately with a package of cigarettes, Mathieu’s brand.

“You run out every time you come over . . . I had these in the fridge so they wouldn’t dry out.”

She resumed her position, one hand on her grandson’s foot, but her back was slightly bent.

“Go on. And this time tell me everything. You’ve never told me you loved somebody before, and I want to hear all about it. And afterwards . . . afterwards I’ll think about it. Right now I can’t.”

Mathieu was still sitting on the rug next to the sofa where Sébastien was sleeping. His second version had been much more detailed than the first. This time he hadn’t merely skimmed over the subject, he had added details and ­emotion as he described something that, he realized as he told it, closely resembled happiness. This time his mother hadn’t taken her eyes off him. He felt himself being ­scrutinized, judged, sized up; she frowned a little at delicate moments or when she didn’t immediately grasp some detail, but she gave him her full attention; he quickly ­realized that his description of how he’d met Jean-Marc was as important to her as the thing itself: she was judging him according to the sincerity of his account.

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 . . .”