I was paralysed by Valérie’s question. I thought about what she’d said – that my sense of humour was ‘charming’. That didn’t seem like a good sign. Already this lunch had taken a turn for the worse. I was here to write about her, not cause any trouble. This was the problem with real people: you had to keep them at an appropriate distance. If you were too cold, nothing would happen, but if you were too warm you risked the integrity of the story. I didn’t have this problem with my other books; my fictional characters never tried to start up a relationship with me. Can you imagine Juliet asking Shakespeare if he was married? I began to doubt my ability to go through with this project. Not to mention the fact that Valérie must really be quite unhappy if she found me charming. My seductiveness had, for some time, resembled a Bergman film (without the subtitles).

I had to stop procrastinating and just act as naturally as I could. ‘I’m not married,’ I replied. ‘I recently became single again.’ I could see from the look on Valérie’s face that she wanted to know more. In any case, she was waiting for me to elaborate on this bald statement. Which I did. My last girlfriend had decided to leave me after six years together. The end had come suddenly. True, we’d had our ups and downs, but for a long time I’d thought what we had was genuine and passionate, and that the wanderings of our hearts did not alter one essential truth: we loved each other. I told Valérie all this because I had no choice; if I wanted to receive, I first had to give. After a while, she interrupted me.

‘I’m sorry to ask you this, but are you sure she didn’t meet someone else?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘No. In fact, I’m sure she didn’t. She would have told me.’

‘People often lie when they’re splitting up.’

‘Well, not in our case.’

I then said ‘voilà,’ indicating that I wished to move on from this subject. I didn’t want to keep talking about it. I didn’t want to tell her that Marie had left me with the words: ‘I prefer solitude to you.’ Yes, that was what she said. Her words had made me very angry. But I imagine she’d said them to hurt me, since I hadn’t reacted to all the signals she’d been sending me: that she was sad, that she was falling out of love with me, that she wasn’t happy or fulfilled. The truth was, I hadn’t understood those signals. It was only when she left me that I realised what they’d meant. Sitting in the café with Valérie, I felt engulfed by a wave of melancholy – an emotion that I thought I had finally purged from my life several weeks before.

Thankfully, Valérie, with perfect tact, cut short my musings with the words: ‘You must be unbearable. I mean, it has to be awful, living with a writer …’