I even treated myself to a bit of an outing: late Saturday night I went and checked out the bars. I had no intention of cheating on Mathieu, but I didn’t feel like spending the rest of the evening in front of the TV set either. Depression and horror. Despite the forecast of freezing rain the boys were still wearing the tight little T-shirts I’d seen on them in August, still clutching the glass of warm beer. The place reeked of expensive perfume and poppers, the music ­nearly blasted you to the floor, the ultra-modern, super-­sophisticated lighting had you reeling in three minutes, yet it was as sad and empty as the dark side of the moon . . . Let them call me neo-petit-bourgeois, intolerant, prematurely senile—I couldn’t take it for more than half an hour. I ­didn’t have the heart to go to the Paradise, I was afraid of running into Luc and “the others,” the ones who’d been talking about me behind my back since August . . . And with the cold and the slippery sidewalks, no way was I going to do Sainte-Catherine.

I walked to the Hotel Méridien where I had to wait a good twenty minutes for the 80 bus. I didn’t want to take a taxi although they were passing at the rate of three or four a minute—and I stood there freezing in my thin suede windbreaker, absolutely gorgeous but absolutely inappropriate for the unleashed elements that were raging about me. Then at the corner of Parc and Bernard, there wasn’t a bus in sight, so I had to walk the rest of the way.

I was sneezing when I came home.

I’m so predictable, sometimes, it depresses me.

I went to bed feeling sorry for myself because I was afraid I’d caught the first cold of the season, because Mathieu wasn’t there—suddenly the bed was so big!—and because (okay, it makes no sense, but that’s me) I actually wouldn’t have minded being wakened the next morning by a strident little voice asking me to come and play!

After freaking out for weeks at the thought of seeing the child again, here I was missing him! (Well, maybe ­“missing” is a bit strong, but let’s say it would have been kind of nice to know he was asleep in my office, hugging his doggy.) I was so annoyed with myself I pounded my ­pillow in disgust.