“I’m really happy for you, Mathieu, but you have to realize I’ve found somebody that matters to me too . . . Gaston isn’t just an onlooker who turns up now and then when you come for Sébastien every fourth Saturday . . . I share my life with him, everything in my life, and that includes Sébastien, whether you like it or not . . . You see Sébastien once a month because you work three Saturdays out of four, but Gaston sees him every day, he’s like a father to him and he loves him as if he were his own child. In a way, Mathieu, Sébastien’s as much his child as he is yours; that’s hard for you, but you’d better get used to it . . . If we decide Sébastien’s going to spend the weekend with you and Jean-Marc, Gaston has to be involved and that’s that.”

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 . . .”