I climbed up to my place, up the creaky staircase that’s bound to collapse any day now since we can’t afford to replace it either. I slammed my door hard, after smearing plenty of paint on the knob, then realized when I was in the kitchen that I didn’t have anything to clean myself off with. I went out on the gallery, a pitiful sight. Mélène was standing in the middle of the lane, grinning.

“Coming down to clean up, or shall I bring the stuff up?”

“Come on up, we’ll have a coffee.”

The kitchen’s the only room in my apartment that I’m really proud of. Raised in a house with a minuscule kitchen and accustomed to hearing my mother complain about the lack of space, I’ve always chosen apartments with huge kitchens, even before I cooked. I have two brothers and two sisters and, like most North Americans, I was brought up in the kitchen. It’s the only place where we all gathered ­regularly, the site of our most spectacular scenes and our teariest reconciliations. We ate all our meals there, the ­dining room being reserved for possible visitors who ­hardly ever came. It was where my father, so often drunk, broke countless plates: my mother spent almost as much time crying there as cooking; I got some slaps on the wrist myself, because of marks that were less than satisfactory. During family parties, at Christmas time, I always ended up there with the women while the men, the real ones, not ­delicate little flowers like me, sat and chewed the fat in the living room, around a bunch of bottles of Bols gin. Sports, gin and sex in the living room; food, beer and sex in the kitchen. My adult preferences were already there: cooking over sports; beer over hard liquor; and as for the last, it’s everybody’s favourite topic especially other people’s sex lives.

My kitchen, then, which was huge, with a southeast ­exposure which makes for the loveliest morning light, and above all practical, played a decisive role in the choice of this house on Bloomfield just above Bernard. For me, in any case, because Jeanne and Mélène, perhaps in reaction to their own mothers’ lives, spend as little time as possible in their own.

“You haven’t cracked a smile all morning, Jean-Marc. Lose your sense of humour last night?”

She barked then, just a little, enough to put me in a really foul mood, while she put too much sugar in her coffee as usual.

In fact I was having trouble laughing at what had ­happened the night before. I didn’t know why exactly, although I’ve made a fool of myself often enough not to get too upset about the misadventures that can occur in my life as a practising and rather reckless homosexual.