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d’Acclimatation amusement park. She was silent the whole time, but she seemed to trust me, as if this were not the first time we had gone walking together. I, too,had the feeling that I knew her well and that we had been down these paths together before.
    Back at the house, she wanted to show me her bedroom, a large room on the second floor that looked out over the trees of the Jardin d’Acclimatation. From the wood panelling and the two built-in glass cabinets on either side of the fireplace, I assumed that it had once been a living room or a study, but never a child’s bedroom. Her bed wasn’t a child’s bed, either, but was broad with upholstered surrounds. Ivory chess pieces were displayed in one of the glass cabinets. No doubt the upholstered bed and the chess pieces were in the house when the Valadiers moved in, along with other items the previous tenants had forgotten or didn’t have time to pack up.
    The little girl did not take her eyes off me. Perhaps she wanted to know what I thought. Finally, I said, ‘You’ve got plenty of room here,’ and she nodded without much conviction. Her mother came in. She said they’d only been living in the house for a few months, but she didn’t say where they’d been before that. The little girl went to a school close by, in Rue de la Ferme, and I was to collect her every afternoon at half past four. I must have said, ‘Yes, Madame.’ At once, a wry smile lit up her face. ‘Don’t call me Madame. Callme…Véra.’ She hesitated, as if she had invented the name. Earlier, when she greeted me, I had taken her to be English or American; I now realised she had a Parisian accent, one that, in old novels, is described as working class.
    â€˜Véra is a very nice name,’ I said.
    â€˜Do you think so?’
    She switched on the lamp on the bedside table and said, ‘There’s not enough light in this room.’
    The little girl, lying on the parquet floor, at the base of one of the cabinets, was leaning on her elbows and solemnly turning the pages of a school exercise book.
    â€˜It’s not very convenient,’ she explained. ‘We need to find her a study so she can do her homework.’
    I had the same impression as I had earlier, when they talked to me in the living room: the Valadiers were camping out in this house.
    She clearly noticed my surprise, because she continued, ‘I don’t know whether we’ll be staying here for long. As a matter of fact, my husband doesn’t like the furniture.’
    She offered that wry smile again and asked where I lived. I told her that I had found a room in what had once been a hotel.
    â€˜Oh yes…we lived in a hotel, too, for a long time.’
    She wanted to know what area I lived in.
    â€˜Near Place Blanche.’
    â€˜Oh, that’s where I grew up,’ she said, with a slight frown. ‘I lived on Rue de Douai.’
    At that instant, she resembled one of those aloof, blonde American women who star in thrillers; I thought her voice was dubbed—exactly like being at the cinema—and was surprised to hear her speaking French.
    â€˜On my way home from the Lycée Jules-Ferry, I used to walk around the block and go through Place Blanche.’ She hadn’t been back to the neighbourhood for a long time. For many years, she had lived in London. That’s where she had met her husband.
    The little girl was no longer taking any notice of us. She was still lying on the floor, writing in a different exercise book, without faltering, completely absorbed by her task. ‘She’s doing her homework,’ said Madame Valadier. ‘You’ll see…at seven, her handwriting is almost that of an adult.’
    It was dark, and yet it was barely five o’clock. Silence everywhere, the same silence I had known at Fossombronne-la-Forêt, at the same time of day and at the same age as the little girl. I suspect