It’s always the same conversational opener with Granny Soize when I arrive, even though she’s unstoppable on WhatsApp and is always chatting to my daughter. I think it’s because she only understands one in every five words of whatever it is you’re saying to her over the phone, seeing as she’s deaf as a post, but she’s too vain to admit it.

‘And you? How are you?’

‘I’m very well. I’ve been put in charge of reprographics, but I think I’ve told you that plenty of times, haven’t I?’

‘Nothing ever changes with you, does it? But are you at least getting out and seeing some people?’

‘If by people you mean have I found a guy to look after Juliette?, the answer is no. I don’t need one. I’ve got quite enough people around with my friend Hildegarde and her family. And then there are my neighbours. The sixth floor of my building is the same as it is here; it’s like a little village.’

Let’s deal with my disabilities. After three super-painful operations at the ages of sixteen, eighteen and twenty-one and a series of metal plates later, I have a very damaged spinal cord. That’s what makes walking so tiresome. It means I can only stand up with orthoses that attach to my legs and go all the way up my thighs, and I need two sticks to help me walk. I’m in constant pain, but because Granny Soize was a tough cookie and I used to get called a cry-baby, I learnt not to complain, to the point that now I don’t even know if I feel any pain anymore.

Everything was fine provided I was doing rehab or I was back on the island, but when I had to confront real life on the mainland, the pile of adolescent bullshit married to the binary thought patterns of high school meant it was a whole different ballgame. No matter how hard I struggled to be a ‘1’, with my crutches and legs in their braces, I was always a ‘0’, a misshapen carrot always shoved aside because I didn’t fall within the standard deviation. An ugly vegetable fit for the compost.

These days, nothing’s really any different, even though I have a doctoral degree; adults are just more polite. People who don’t know me just ignore me instinctively, as if I were incapable of giving anybody directions, of answering a question or having an opinion, just because I’m swaying on my crutches. It’s as if I were some sort of retard, in fact. And if, by some miracle, they do talk to me, their eyes are fixed on some zone at chin level so as not to have to meet my gaze because they’re afraid. Of what? Who’d know? I guess I might be contagious after all. Or bring them bad luck.