The second: It’s spring 1990. I’m fifteen. I’m studying French for my baccalauréat. I’m alone in the house—my parents are on vacation in Spain with my brother and sister. I enjoy the solitude. I spend all day buried in the books on the syllabus: Les liaisons dangereuses, L’éducation sentimentale, Aurélien…every book leads to another book, every discovery urges me to explore the music, the art, and the ideas of the period. Late one morning, I collect the mail and notice that the mailman has accidentally included a letter addressed to Francis. I decide to bring it to him. Since there is no fence between the two houses, I go around the back and walk across the lawn. One of the French doors is standing open. Without calling out, I walk into the living room, intending to simply leave the letter on a table. Suddenly, I see Francis sitting in an armchair. He hasn’t heard me over the Schubert impromptu playing on the stereo (curious in itself in a house more accustomed to Michel Sardou and Johnny Hallyday). Even more improbably, Francis is reading. And it is not just any book. I can see the cover reflected in the window: Memoirs of Hadrian, by Marguerite Yourcenar. I am stunned. Francis likes to boast that, aside from the sex scenes in Gérard de Villiers’s racy spy novels, he doesn’t read. He openly rails against the arty types and intellectuals living in their ivory towers while he has been breaking his back working on building sites since the age of fourteen. I tiptoe out of the room, my mind swirling with questions. I have often seen morons try to pass themselves off as intelligent, but this is the first time I have seen an intelligent man try to pass himself off as a moron.

4.

“Papa! Papa!”

I was roused from my memories by shouts. From the far end of the lawn, Emma and Louise were running toward us with my mother trailing behind. Instinctively, I snapped shut the dossier and the horrors it contained.

As the little girls clambered over their father, my mother said, “I’ll leave the girls with you. I’m going to buy some more apricots at Vergers de Provence.”

She waved the keys to the Mini Cooper that I’d left on the hall stand when I arrived. “I’ll take your car, Thomas. Maxime’s car is blocking mine.”

“That’s okay, Annabelle, I’ll move it.”

“No, no, don’t worry. I need to pop by the shopping center and I’m already running late.”

She turned to me and said pointedly, “And this way, Thomas can’t sneak off like a thief or turn his nose up at my apricot tart.”

“But I need to go somewhere. I need my car!”

“You can take mine. The keys are in the ignition.”