Mathieu had been hit so hard, he could think of nothing to say. He felt as if he’d been knocked out and would need several hours to come back to his senses. He’d never thought of Gaston as a rival, he even felt a little ­contemptuous of him—a jock who was nuts about sports, whose macho manners had been somewhat softened by his enforced but ill-digested reading of a few feminist ­magazines. It’s true he tended to think that Gaston stopped existing when he was out of his field of vision, that he was a negligible quantity, an on-looker as Louise had said, but now suddenly he’d become a full-fledged human being—who had rights over his own child on top of it! He was so caught off guard, he decided just to change the subject. He’d think it over later; for the moment, he was just too horrified.

“What about you, Louise, you haven’t told me what you think . . .”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think about it, you just sprang it on me out of the blue . . . You could have told me yesterday on the phone, you know . . . It’s probably okay if everybody thinks so . . . But don’t forget, we have to ask Sébastien what he wants, it’s his business too after all . . .”

Mathieu felt drained. He had an urge to run away again, run away forever, without even kissing Sébastien, to go and lie down, to hide rather, and not get up again. Ever. They sat there for some time, not speaking, Louise drinking her ­coffee, Mathieu playing with his spoon.

“It’s tough, all this . . .”

He’d spoken almost without realizing it, as people do when they’re alone but longing to be overheard.

“It’s hard on everybody, Mathieu. Even Sébastien.”

He laid his hand over Louise’s.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to talk without all the old problems coming up . . .”

“I don’t think we will. We’ve been too good for each other, and too bad, and I can’t imagine us being just friendly and polite . . .”

“But at least we can talk to each other without screaming.”

Louise struggled to smile; it wasn’t a complete success, but it was very touching.

“You mean you can talk to me without screaming!”

The key in the lock, Sébastien’s voice—“Do you think Daddy’s here?”—Gaston’s—“Yup, I’m sure he is!”

Louise and Mathieu exchanged a look that was so intense it overwhelmed them.

Jean-Marc

Jean-Marc

While Mélène was struggling to cram a limp cushion into an undersized pillowcase, I was trying to fit an oversized sheet onto the mattress of the hide-a-bed in my office.

“That’ll never look like a child’s bed . . .”

“What’s important, Jean-Marc, is that he’ll have a place to sleep. He’s only four years old—I don’t think his esthetic sense is all that well developed yet!”