On the other end of the line, she heard a man say: ‘If he wants to talk to me, tell him to come here …’ Odile, the secretary, asked Patrick to repeat what he’d said. And he did: ‘If he wants to talk to me, tell him to come here …’

Odile told him she couldn’t report this kamikaze response to her boss. Particularly since Desjoyaux was standing there watching her, waiting for her to confirm his attacker’s imminent arrival. But Martin hung up, so Odile had no choice but to repeat what she’d heard. She opened her mouth but no sound emerged: some sentences are so afraid of the reactions they will provoke that they prefer to announce themselves in silence. Odile had to try several times before her voice grew loud enough to be heard:

‘He said that if you want to talk to him, you have to go and see him …’

She lowered her head then, as if her boss were pointing a revolver at her.

In the end, Desjoyaux went to look for Martin’s office. But, since he didn’t know where it was and he didn’t want to have to speak to anyone, he walked more than half a mile through the building’s corridors. Everyone turned to stare at him as he passed, and he seemed to hear the word ‘curtains’ whispered everywhere he went. Or was that his imagination? When you feel guilty, your mind supplies voices of denunciation. He was a Raskolnikov of curtains. At last he found Martin’s office. Patrick said hello first – the cherry on the cake of his rebellion. Shocked and sweating, Desjoyaux shouted: ‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know very well what I’m talking about. It has to be you. The curtains!’

‘Why does it have to be me?’

‘Because we talked about them that afternoon, and … Oh, I don’t have to justify myself to you! I just came to tell you that I am firing you for gross misconduct.’

‘What about my clients?’

‘I don’t give a damn about your clients. We’ll just give them to someone else. They won’t even notice the difference. There’s another Martin in accounts – I’ll give him your job. That way, the clients will never know anything’s changed!’

‘And when do I have to leave?’

‘Now, you idiot! Now!’

‘You really think it’s normal to ask a senior executive who’s been at the company for twenty years what he thinks of your curtains? When you’ve told him three days before that it’s imperative you see him? You think that’s normal?’

‘I don’t care! What’s not normal is setting fire to my curtains! So get out of here now!’

‘All right. But this is just the beginning.’

‘What does that mean? Are you threatening me, Martin? Are you threatening me?’

‘It doesn’t mean anything. You can take it any way you want.’

‘You madman! I’ll be back in an hour and I don’t want to see the slightest trace of your presence here. And believe me, you can forget about getting a single centime in compensation. I hope I see you one day begging in the street.’