The presents were distributed just before dinner, under the mocking eye of Goofus whom Sébastien had set up beside him. Sébastien opened or, rather, bashed in his ­packages with cries of joy, shouting happily as he saw the toys the women had chosen, which were numerous and unusual: no He-Man’s or Transformers but beautiful, ­educational, imaginative things that Sébastien hadn’t even known existed, which thrilled him. He often asked: “What’s this?” and listened attentively, despite his excitement, as the women explained. After ten minutes he had disappeared under a heap of wrapping paper, and Zouzou went to get her camera. Twice, Sébastien lost Goofus, and then when he found him again, showed him all the presents he’d missed while he was buried under the wrapping paper, ­talking to him as if he were a real person, to everyone’s delight. Then he thanked each of my friends in turn, whom he was seeing for the first time; I caught glimpses of a few damp eyes and heard some envious sighs. Mathieu seemed very touched but sat silent in a corner, perhaps because his sense of propriety wouldn’t let him show any emotional excess.

Supper itself was eaten amid a euphoria verging on hysteria. We’d decided to “act out” a typically Québécois meal and, aided by the wine, we’d got carried away a little, despite Sébastien’s presence: the humour was rather rude, the laughter fairly crude, as each of us used his or her recollections of family Christmases, at which the liquor had flowed a little too freely, to bring out our imitations of Aunt Imelda or Uncle Edouard or Cousin Jeannine. We even had a ­singalong, featuring those old-fashioned songs with double or triple meanings, we were treated to misogynous tales that would make your hair stand on end—in the mouths of my women friends they became an extraordinary kind of release, their imitations of the men in their families being unusually nasty and unusually accurate—we heard some hilarious accounts of booze-induced behaviour, we had a mashed-potato fight that needless to say thrilled Sébastien, but worried me a little: in fact I felt obliged to explain to Sébastien several times that everybody was only fooling, this was the way grownups played and he mustn’t ever act this way at home. And the worst thing was, he seemed to understand. He’d go from one person to the next, climbing into laps, singing, kissing the cheeks that were offered to him. The girls fussed over him, tickling him, raving over his complexion and his gorgeous eyes; he had the time of his life and took in all the attention as if he’d been born to it, dragging along a new plush toy that I had a hunch was going to give Goofus some competition . . .