Our table was the worst one on the terrace, under the outside staircase, but it was also the most private. The waiter had to bend over to avoid being knocked out when he served us and he didn’t always remember.

Mathieu didn’t tuck into his main course right away.

“If we’re going to see each other again, and I hope we will, there’s something you have to know.”

“You aren’t going to tell me you’ve got a lover . . .”

“No. I’m married . . . and I’ve got a four-year-old son.”

This was so totally unexpected that I thought at first it was a joke. But from his serious, almost pained expression, I realized that it was true. It took me a minute to respond.

“I’m sorry . . . I don’t know what to say . . . I was ready for anything but that.”

“I’m not surprised . . .”

“But you told me you were twenty-four! And you look nineteen!

“What can I say? Life starts early for some people. I got married when I was eighteen, to my childhood sweetheart. We’d known each other forever and I suppose we were very fond of each other, but obviously we had no idea what we were doing . . . Even our parents were against it! We had less sense than they did, if you can imagine! I really think we did it more for the presents and the wedding itself than to live together. We were children. We got caught in the trap like everybody else who gets married, we went into debt for ten years to buy incredibly expensive things for our apartment . . . I’ll still be paying them off five years from now.”

“But that wasn’t who answered when I phoned the other day . . .”

“No, no, we’ve been separated nearly two years. I went back to live with my mother, because of all the debts.”

Mathieu pushed away his plate of crudités as if it were ­making him sick.

“I left Louise very suddenly when . . . when I realized . . . I’m sorry, it’s hard to say because I never talk about it to anybody.”

“I understand . . . You don’t have to if you don’t want . . . We can pick it up another time.”

“No, no, it’ll be good for me.”

He became more animated. I felt he must have been ­holding himself back for a long time, looking for someone to confide in. But why me?

“It hurt so much, Jean-Marc. Me as much as Louise. I ­realized I must have seemed like a real son-of-a-bitch when I told her, but I was too honest to try and hide it . . . I thought if I explained my problems to her I’d be able to understand myself . . . She’s very smart, smarter than me anyway. I ­figured she’d catch on faster and maybe be able to explain to me what was going on . . .”