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that, at that age, I, too, had an adult’shandwriting. I got into trouble because I stopped using a fountain pen, and wrote with a ballpoint instead. Out of curiosity, I checked what the little girl was using: a ballpoint. At her school, in Rue de la Ferme, they probably allowed students to use Bic pens with transparent tips and black, red or green lids. Did she know how to do capital letters? In any case, I doubted they still taught edged-pen lettering.
    They took me back to the ground floor. On the left, a double door opened onto a large empty room, at the end of which was a desk. Monsieur Valadier was sitting on the corner of the desk, talking on the telephone. A chandelier cast a harsh light over him. He was speaking in a strange-sounding language that only Moreau-Badmaev could have understood: perhaps Persian of the plains. A cigarette was stuck in the corner of his mouth. He waved to me.
    â€˜Say hello to the Moulin Rouge for me,’ Madame Valadier whispered, staring at me with a sad look as if she envied me going back to that neighbourhood.
    â€˜Goodbye, Madame.’
    It had slipped out but still she corrected me. ‘No. Goodbye, Véra.’
    So I repeated it: ‘Goodbye, Véra.’ Was that actually her name or had she chosen it, one day at Lycée Jules-Ferrywhen she was feeling sad, because she didn’t like her real name?
    She proceeded towards the door with the lithe gait of aloof, unfathomable blonde women.
    â€˜Walk with mademoiselle for a bit,’ she said to her daughter. ‘There’s a good girl.’
    The little girl nodded and gave me an anxious look.
    â€˜I often send her round the block at night. She likes it. It makes her feel like a big girl. The other evening she even wanted to do a second trip…She wants to practise so she’s not frightened anymore.’
    From behind us, at the end of the room, the gentle voice of Monsieur Valadier reached me, in between long stretches of silence and, each time, I wondered if his telephone conversation had come to an end.
    â€˜Soon, you won’t be frightened of the dark anymore, and we won’t have to leave the light on so you can go to sleep.’
    Madame Valadier opened the front door. When I saw that the little girl was about to go outside wearing only her skirt and blouse, I said, ‘Perhaps you should put on a coat.’
    She seemed surprised and almost reassured that I might give her advice, and she turned to her mother.
    â€˜Yes, yes…Go and put on your coat.’
    She ran up the stairs. Madame Valadier looked at me intently with her clear, pale eyes.
    â€˜Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’ll know how to look after her…We are sometimes so lost, my husband and I…’
    She was still staring at me with a look that made me think she was about to cry. And yet her face remained impassive and there was not the slightest trace of a tear.

    We had gone further than around the block. I said to the little girl, ‘Perhaps you should go back home now.’
    But she wanted to keep walking with me. I explained that I had to go and catch the metro.
    As we went along the avenue, it felt as if I had been here before. The smell of the dead leaves and the damp earth reminded me of something. It was the same feeling I’d had in the little girl’s bedroom. Everything I had wanted to forget up until now or, rather, everything I had avoided thinking about, like someone with vertigo trying not to look down, all of it was going to emerge bit by bit, and now I was ready to face up to it. We were walking down the path thatruns along the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and the little girl took my hand to cross the avenue in the direction of the Porte Maillot.
    â€˜Do you live far away?’
    She asked the question as if she hoped that I’d take her home with me. We had reached the entrance of the metro. I was convinced that if I just said the word she would follow me down the steps