In fact we rarely left that room, which now smelled of Vicks, tiger balm and eucalyptus oil. Our pyjamas—I’d found two pairs at the back of a drawer—were rumpled, the bed was in a deplorable state, and we ourselves, from ­sweating and laughing and sleeping whenever we felt like it, were totally wasted as if we’d come through an American-style lost weekend. I didn’t dare look in the ­bathroom mirror: I felt like the alcoholic version of myself. And Mathieu, though he was so handsome and usually so concerned about his appearance, let himself go too, his ­neglect surprising me a little but giving me something to laugh at as well: unshaven, with greasy, uncombed hair, he looked as if he’d just spent a month in a logging camp. I called him my “Canadien errant” or my “grubby lumberjack” which gave us both a giggle—an indication of how low our humour had sunk!

On the Thursday, around two a.m., as we were watching some sombre drama of which we’d missed the title, I told Mathieu, without thinking, that I hadn’t felt so out of it since I’d had mononucleosis during Expo ’67. Mathieu started.

“You were awfully young to have mono!”

“Not that young, I was twenty.”

Mathieu propped himself up on one elbow.

“Weren’t you born in 1950?”

“No, ’45, like everybody else!”

Mathieu sat up in bed as if a spring had pinched him. “The night we met you told me you were thirty-five! You’re thirty-nine!”

I remembered our first conversation back in August, when I had indeed lied to Mathieu about my age—he’d even told me I didn’t look thirty-five—and I started ­laughing like a lunatic, bent double in the bed, punching the mattress with both fists . . .

“You’ve been living with an old man for two months and you didn’t even know it!”

Suddenly he didn’t find it funny at all.

“I hate lies, Jean-Marc, I hate knowing you’ve been lying to me for months!”

“I lied to you once, Mathieu, one night when we didn’t even know each other, and I did it because I was afraid you’d think I was too old . . . And then I forgot about it, that’s all . . . If I hadn’t I’d have rectified the situation, told you the truth, I’d have gladly told you how ancient I am . . .”

“But the difference between us isn’t just ten years, it’s ­fifteen!”

“So what, Mathieu, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is, when I’m forty you’ll be fifty-five!”

It was the first time either of us had mentioned the future; Mathieu suddenly blushed red to the roots of his hair.

I took him in my arms.