Just as I was about to begin questioning her, Madeleine asked: ‘How did it go at my daughter’s house last night?’

‘Very well.’

‘What did you think of her husband?’

‘Very nice,’ I felt obliged to reply, out of a desire to remain neutral.

‘And Jérémie? I bet he never stopped talking!’

‘…’

Were we discussing the same person? Of course, people behave differently in different company, but all the same I found it hard to imagine that silent teenager as a friendly chatterbox. Maybe he saved all the words that bubbled up inside him so he could inundate his grandmother with them? Madeleine told me she was happy that I was going to write about the rest of her family. It was a relief not to feel that I was expecting too much of her. This was exactly what Valérie had said. And in fact I soon realised that Valérie had been right about her mother’s faltering memory. During that second meeting, I noticed a few little absences. It wasn’t much, and perhaps I was focusing on it after what her daughter had told me, but I did get the impression that Madeleine was struggling at times to find her words.

I suggested that we could look through some photograph albums together. And so we set sail on a voyage into the past. There were so many pictures of her daughters. I saw Valérie aged seven or eight. It was strange to think I’d just eaten lunch with the adult version of that child. Examining the photograph, I saw what seemed like a gleam of sadness in her eyes, a look that echoed the sadness I’d perceived in her during our lunch date. Was it possible to detect hints of a child’s future in their expression? No, my gaze must have been contaminated by today’s Valérie. In one of the pictures, her sister was holding her hand. Stéphanie appeared sunnier than Valérie, but the kind of sun that dazzles and blinds.

There were so many other memories to look through. I came across one of Madeleine’s wedding photographs, in black and white of course.⁶ That made me want to ask about René again. But I didn’t want to hurt my host. I imagine the pain of remembering what no longer exists. Widows and widowers pretend to get used to the horror of living without their partner, out of a sort of human politeness, but the truth is that their hearts have been torn out. In fact, as soon as Madeleine began speaking of her husband, I got the same impression I’d had the day before. She had loved spending her life with him, but it had been a marriage devoid of passion. She spoke of him as if he were a travelling companion, almost a friend. She talked about how self-effacing he was, even at the end: ‘He suffered, but he passed away so calmly, in his sleep.’ Then she added with a sigh: ‘The dream …’

So that was it, the ultimate dream of a person’s life: dying in one’s sleep.