Of course I could modify reality; it would be easy to add a few impromptu incidents, to invent some charming neuroses. Is Romain Gary’s memoir Promise at Dawn really an exact portrayal of his mother? Didn’t the author exaggerate a bit when he described the tireless, overflowing affection that this woman felt for her son? The way she worshipped him as some sort of deity made her seem sublime and, let’s be honest, fictional. In any autobiography there is a temptation to flirt with the realms of imagination.

Could Jérémie read my troubled mind? Just as I was thinking this, he sat up straight. It was quite strange seeing him like that: his posture changed completely, and there was a brighter look in his eyes.

‘It is pretty cool,’ he said. ‘We’ve got our own official biographer.’

‘Thank you,’ I replied, unsure whether this was a compliment or just an observation.

‘I’d have preferred Amélie Nothomb though.’

Not wanting to seem uptight, I smiled at this witticism. It was good news, after all: I had here a specimen of an endangered species, a teenager capable of making a literary reference. As it turned out, this burst of sociability would be Jérémie’s only contribution to the evening. But I knew I shouldn’t expect too much: one reply per meal was already pretty good going.

Not that he lacked encouragement. Valérie pushed her son to be a little more talkative. In the end he mumbled a joke about how he wished he had his own Wikipedia entry because that way he wouldn’t have to introduce himself to people. (Unfortunately, it fell a little flat since it was hard to make out what he was saying.) Under sustained maternal pressure to open up, he finally sighed and said that his favourite colour was blue. I tried to match his wit by talking about how important this colour would be to my story, and my attempt at humour fell just as flat as Jérémie’s had in the awkward silence that filled their dining room. Not that it mattered: I could wait for my new characters to come to me, as Madeleine and Patrick had. In truth, the same thing happens to me with fiction. I sometimes invent men or women who have no desire to do anything, and I have to submit to their will too. Or to what you might describe as my imagination being in a bad mood.

12

What would this dinner have been like if I hadn’t been there? To have an idea, all I had to do was look at the large television that dominated the living room. I had infiltrated a tired family, trapped on the wheel of routine; passengers on the same ship who brushed past each other without ever really meeting. It was a common household tragedy, but no less painful for that. Was life really nothing more than this parade of weariness? I tried to imagine Valérie and Patrick falling in love, having sex, travelling together and envisaging a future when they would be the happy parents of two joyous little children. Where had all those dreams gone? I could write about this world submerged under the weight of years. I always see the past in the face of the present; I always see the child inside the adult, and the spark of passion in the dead-eyed stares of bored couples. Despite the somewhat reserved welcome they had given me, I was touched by these people; I sensed their fragility, and it echoed emotions that I too had felt. We were united in our stupefaction at the trials of ordinary life.