“Maman, I’ll be l-late.” His voice was neutral and polite. To me: “Excuse me, Madame, I have to get to s-school.”

“Here, have one of my special pralines. On the house:”

I held it out to him in a twist of Cellophane.

“My son doesn’t eat chocolate.” Caroline’s voice was sharp. “He’s hyperactive. Sickly. He knows it’s bad for him.”

I looked at the boy. He looked neither sickly nor hyperactive, merely bored and a little self-conscious.

“She thinks a great deal about you,” I told him. “Your grandmother. Maybe you could drop in and say hello one of these days. She’s one of my regulars.”

The bright eyes flickered for a moment from beneath the lank brown hair.

“Maybe.” The voice was unenthusiastic.

“My son doesn’t have time to hang about in sweetshops,” said Caroline loftily. “My son’s a gifted boy. He knows what he owes his parents.”

There was a kind of threat in what she said, a smug note of certainty. She turned to walk past Luc, who was already in the doorway, his satchel swinging.

“Luc.” My voice was low, persuasive. He turned again with some reluctance. I was reaching for him before I knew it, seeing past the polite blank face and seeing – seeing… “Did you like Rimbaud?” I spoke without thinking, my head reeling with images.

For a moment the boy looked guilty.

“What?”

“Rimbaud. She gave you a book of his poems for your birthday, didn’t she?”

“Y-yes.” The reply was almost inaudible. His eyes – they are a bright green-grey – lifted towards mine. I saw him give a tiny shake of his head, as if in warning. “I d-didn’t read them, though,” he said in a louder voice. “I’m not a f-fan of p-poetry.”

A dog-eared book, carefully hidden at the bottom of a clothes chest. A boy murmuring the lovely words to himself with a peculiar fierceness. Please come, I whispered silently. Please, for Armande’s sake.

Something in his eyes flickered.

“I have to go now.”

Caroline was waiting impatiently at the door.

“Please. Take these.”

I handed him the tiny packet of pralines. The boy has secret. I could feel them itching to escape. Deftly, keeping out of his mother’s line of vision he took the packet, smiled. I might almost have imagined the words he mouthed as he went.

“Tell her I’ll be there,” he whispered, “when Maman goes to the h-hairdresser’s.”

Then he was gone.

I told Armande about their visit when she came later today. She shook her head and rocked with laughter when I recounted my conversation with Caroline.

“He, he, he!” Ensconced in her sagging armchair, a cup of mocha in her delicate claw, she looked more like an apple-doll than ever. “My poor Caro. Doesn’t like to be reminded, does she?” She sipped the drink gleefully. Where does she get off, he?” she demanded with some testiness. “Telling you what I can and can’t have. Diabetic, am I? That’s what her doctor would like us all to think.” She grunted. “Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I? I’m careful. But that isn’t enough for them, no. They have to have control.” She shook her head. “That, poor boy. He stutters, did you notice that?”

I nodded.

“That’s his mother’s doing.” Armande was scornful. “If she’d left him alone – but no. Always correcting him. Always carrying on. Making him worse. Making out there’s something wrong with him all the time:” She made a sound of derision. “There’s nothing wrong with him that a good dose of living wouldn’t cure,” she declared stoutly. “Let him run awhile without worrying what would happen if he fell over. Let him loose. Let him breathe.”

I said that it was normal for a mother to be protective of her children.