The Mother of Us All adores grains and granola. Especially in the morning. But sometimes she fixes herself a big bowlful at noon, with yoghurt, fruit and wheat-germ. And offers some to you. She claims it puts everything where it’s ­supposed to be, that no other food has the nutritional value of that disgusting mush and that we should eat nothing else, since after all man is nothing but a seed-eater who was diverted from the right path by the disastrous discovery of meat, the cause of all his ills. I tried it once and felt as if my stomach would be blocked for at least three days: I felt heavy and listless and had a doughy taste in my mouth that produced an annoying tickle in my throat. Health food makes me sick, I’ve always said so. My system’s used to the garbage I’m always stuffing it with and it reacts just fine, thank you very much. So now when I go to Mélène’s for lunch I bring my own junk food and I disgust her with my poison while she nauseates me with her panacea.

So there we sat talking, Mélène with her bowl of cereal the mere colour of which made me gag, and I over a plate of canned meatball stew that nobody else in the gang would be able to stomach.

Mélène seemed delighted at my account of the night before. She listened without interrupting me, in itself an event, an emotional little smile on her lips. I already knew what she’d tell me, but maybe that was precisely why I’d come. And in fact I didn’t get away.

“It’s been a while since you’ve gone out with someone for so long, Jean-Marc. Four times, wow! that’s serious. Usually you get turned off right away, after one night. The next morning you give them a huge breakfast, then tactfully kick them out.”

She’d assumed her Mother of Us All voice, high-pitched, ironic, almost condescending. A real mom making gentle fun of her naughty child.

“Just a year ago you were swearing up and down you’d never get caught again—no more lovers, only tricks.”

I was wiping the last of the gravy from my plate with a slice of six-grain bread, my one concession to Mélène’s ­regimen.

“Things were bad last year, you know that as well as I do. I wasn’t ready for another love story that would tear the skin off my heart.”

“Who says this one won’t?”

“Who says it’s a love story?”

“Well it sure didn’t start as casual sex. I just hope you aren’t deluding yourself, Jean-Marc; it sounds to me like one of those fine little romances you swear you’ve given up for good!”