Valérie sent me a message ten minutes later, informing me that they’d bought tickets for Sunday. I could tell Madeleine, who would probably be surprised by this turn of events. But then there had already been so many improbable episodes in the past few days. Valérie would no doubt find it moving to meet her mother’s first love. Perhaps, like me, she would see it as The Bridges of Madison County with a happy ending. A love affair, a separation, years of frustration, but with this reunion as its climax. On the veranda, behind the glass divider that looked a bit like a cinema screen, I’d thought to myself that Meryl Streep had just found Clint Eastwood.

I suggested that I visit them on Saturday after arriving in Paris so I could tell them all about the trip. This was my alibi for meeting up with the whole Martin family, probably for the last time. I asked Valérie to make sure the children were there, though I doubted Lola would agree to see me. I had sent her a photograph of her grandmother standing in front of the Pacific (a symbolic name for this pictorial peace offering), but she hadn’t replied. Apparently I had a better rapport with old people. This chimed with a feeling I’d always had about myself: that I was born old. In fact, it was more than a feeling, because my life had provided proof of it: as a teenager, I’d suffered a cardiac disease that generally only affects the elderly. The doctors had observed me and analysed me, like a rare medical specimen. So, clearly, old age flows through my veins. But that is a different book.

88

Late that afternoon, Madeleine called my room. She was waiting for me in the lobby. I went downstairs and, before even mentioning her conversation with Yves, told her that her daughter would be arriving on Sunday. She replied instantly: ‘I would have been fine staying here on my own.’ Clearly it annoyed her that her family had organised a sort of rescue party; I think she felt she was being treated like an invalid.

‘Patrick and Valérie are going to turn it into a holiday,’ I explained.

‘Oh really? He’s coming too?’ she asked, surprised. It had been a long time since she’d seen the two of them together, apart from the odd birthday party. I omitted to mention the cremation of the curtains or Patrick’s dismissal. Madeleine had been through enough exciting adventures recently.

We left the hotel and went for a walk, in search of a bench facing the ocean.

‘I told Yves I’d see him tomorrow morning instead of later today,’ she told me.

‘That’s fine.’

‘With the jet lag, I’m finding it hard to think clearly. I probably need to digest everything we discussed this morning.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Yes, I’m going to tell you.’

And yet she fell silent after pronouncing those words, waiting for us to find the perfect spot for the sharing of secrets.