“That’s not what I meant, Mamma . . . I just meant that when you cook with a wok everything retains all its ­vitamins . . .”

I really wanted them out of my kitchen but I didn’t dare say so. Sébastien’s nose was a little too close to my knife—I was slicing lemons and he liked the smell—and Mathieu and his mother were sitting at the breakfast table, drinks in hand—beer for Rose, red wine for Mathieu.

“The doctor even said I was giving you too many vitamins! Come on, Mathieu, you were a healthy child because I always fed you properly, so don’t start talking nonsense in front of other people . . .”

I sliced my shallots amid relative silence, with only Sébastien speaking up now and then, asking me why I was doing this or that . . . After his mother’s little outburst, Mathieu had to find some harmless topic of conversation that would suit everybody, but I left him on his own, hoping he’d decide to move to the living room. Rose got up and came over to me.

I was chopping ginger. Sébastien had just said that the root looked like a little man and he’d given a disgusted “yuck” when I sliced off part of it.

“The little man lost his head!”

Rose came to look at the figure in question.

“That’s ginger, eh? I see it at the Vietnamese woman’s next door . . . Smells good but I wouldn’t know what to do with it . . .”

I felt her growing impatient there on my left. She was shifting from one foot to the other, and running her hand over the electric stove which, to my great embarrassment, wasn’t very clean. She was like someone who has ­something important to say and can’t get it out.

“Well, it’s a lovely house!”

“Thanks, I’m glad you like it . . .”

I let her go on, unsure just what she wanted.

“Can I give you a hand?”

I should have thought of it. I realized she wasn’t used to seeing a man cook while she has a drink and watches. And then I decided I was being unfair. And a boor. And macho. She was only a few years older than I, after all, and surely she was acting not out of some atavistic urge but out of ­simple kindness. (In fact Mathieu had often told me about his mother’s regular bouts of feminism, her fierce struggle against the way women were treated at work, her union activity . . . )

I replied without looking at her, I was so ashamed of myself.

“No, no thanks, it’s all right . . . I like chopping vegetables . . . it’s relaxing . . .”

She bent over the wok, frowning slightly. For a moment she looked so much like Mathieu it disturbed me.

“You put in all that?”

“Yes, and it cooks in five minutes.”

“That’s long enough?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t feed you raw shrimp . . .”