Sorry, I had to press the Karl Lagerfeld button. I couldn’t possibly let my book be weighed down by a commentary on a poem by François Villon. At this point in my story, it would have been too much of a risk. Particularly since my feeble attempts at literary analysis went on for a good hour. Jérémie looked dubious. I fully understood his surprise and disappointment. How could a professional writer have such a shaky grasp of the history of literature? How could he not know exactly what his colleagues were thinking? To him, I was like a professional footballer who had turned up on the local pitch and seemed incapable of kicking a ball. I tried to explain to him that it was possible to write without necessarily being a literary theorist. In fact, it was even possible to write a masterpiece without having any literary culture at all. But clearly Jérémie’s image of a writer was the conventional one: a man living in an attic surrounded by encyclopaedias. Maybe I should just have been honest. Maybe I should have admitted that I was pretty clueless when it came to Old French. I wasn’t sure what attitude to adopt with him.

At last Valérie came home, bringing my torture to an end. I left Jérémie’s bedroom feeling even more put out since I hadn’t managed to gather any information that would enable me to shed new light on his character. But I had to take my time and not lose heart. My project required a level of patience that didn’t come naturally to me. In truth, all of us lack patience these days. By permitting us to get what we want at the swipe of a screen, by putting us permanently in touch with others, this age is teaching us impatience. Just as we do yoga to relax, we should perhaps practise waiting. To help others, we should systematically arrive late for all our meetings.

And in fact, Valérie did ask me to wait while she got ready to go out. Sitting alone in the living room, I had the impression that I had gone back in time, to when I first arrived. Just then, Lola walked through the room, graciously offering me a brief nod. Our relationship, too, was going backwards: now I was no longer even granted the sound of her voice. But I did notice one interesting detail about her: she had no aptitude for announcing her appearances. In other words, she was the kind of character who enters a room suddenly. This made me think of Stavrogin, the hero of Dostoyevsky’s Demons. At one point, the narrator says of this character that he enters a salon, having already begun talking in the corridor. As with Lola, there was a sort of humiliation to be found in transitions.

I had barely formed this thought when it was confirmed: Lola suddenly appeared in front of me. As if she’d dropped from the ceiling. She stared into my eyes for a moment, incredibly deep into my eyes, before murmuring: ‘Since everyone here is talking to you, I thought I may as well do it too. So here’s the situation: I’m in love with a boy. His name is Clément and he’s a year older than me. We’ve been seeing each other for the past month. And it’s going really well. But things are getting hotter between us. He wants us to have sex. And I’m not sure. Because he’s already had sex with four or five girls at my school. Everyone knows it. And after that, it’s over. So, basically, part of me is afraid that he’ll dump me as soon as he gets what he wants. And another part thinks he’s the one I want to lose my virginity with, no matter what happens afterwards. What do you think?’