1. 13. In the same way, I can never hear a Souchon song without thinking about sushi.

46

Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes to everything. Seeing Jérémie before having dinner with Valérie struck me as a somewhat hectic evening. Of course, after asking the members of a family to speak to me, I did feel a certain obligation to make myself available to them. It was my duty to submit to their will, to live in the dictatorship of their reality. But I was afraid that my powers of concentration would let me down; after a certain point, I knew, my brain started to resemble the Soviet Union in 1989. Would I be capable of making the most of the information I was going to receive? Given what was about to happen with Jérémie, my fears were probably justified.

And yet things started well. He greeted me with a big smile, looking almost relieved. I assumed he was about to take the place I’d assigned him in my book, no doubt prompted by his parents. He began by asking politely: ‘So how’s your project going?’

‘Pretty well, thanks. I’m going to the United States with your grandmother.’

‘Oh, really? Why?’

‘She wants to see someone who lives there.’

‘Who?’

‘A man she used to love. Before she met your grandfather.’

‘Seriously? That’s too weird.’

‘Weird? I don’t know about that. I think it will be very emotional for her.’

‘And you’re going to talk about all that in your book?’

‘Well, I need to see how it goes first, but probably.’

‘Cool.’

‘So … You wanted to see me? I was very pleased when your mother told me that. Like I told you, it’s important for me that you’re in my book.’

‘Oh yeah … But …’

‘What?’

‘It wasn’t just for the book. Well, I mean, kind of … Because we can talk and that. But I wanted to see you for something else too.’

‘Okay …’

‘Well, it’s just that I have this French homework to hand in tomorrow, and to be honest I don’t understand it at all, so I thought maybe you could help me out.’

‘…’

I was speechless. He must have seen that I was hoping for something else altogether when I came to see him. The disappointment was written all over my face. He hadn’t wanted a novelist, but a private tutor. Then again, maybe this was a good way of forging a connection with him. The intimate conversation could come afterwards, lying in ambush behind the essay-writing advice.

When he showed me the text he had to analyse, however, I immediately realised this was not going to be easy. It was François Villon’s ‘La Ballade des pendus’. I have to admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of medieval poetry. I had some excellent teachers when I was at school, and some of them helped influence my love of words, but I doubt any teenager can be encouraged to feel enthusiastic about a poem in Old French. I didn’t want to say any of this to Jérémie, of course, since that would only discourage him. So instead I exaggerated my excitement, going on about how I adored this particular poem. He didn’t look very convinced. And who could blame him? I was speaking like an actor at an audition, about to hear the dread words: ‘We’ll call you.’