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and never return to her parents. I knew exactly how she felt. It even seemed as if that was how it was meant to be.
    â€˜Now it’s my turn to walk you home.’
    She seemed crestfallen at the prospect. But I told her that next week I would take her for a trip in the metro. We were walking back along the path. It was two or three weeks after I thought I had recognised my mother in the corridors of Châtelet station. I imagined her at this time of day, crossing the courtyard of the apartment block, on the other side of Paris, wearing her yellow coat. On the stairs, she would stop on each landing.
A missed opportunity. What is lost will never be found
. Perhaps in twenty years’ time, the little girl, like me, would find her parents again, one evening at peak hour, in those same corridors where the train connections were signposted.
    There was a light on in one of the French windows on the ground floor, in the room where Monsieur Valadier had been on the telephone. I rang the bell, but no one came. The little girl was quiet, as if she was used to this sort of situation. After a while, she said, ‘They’ve gone,’ and she smiled and shrugged. I considered taking her back to my place to spend the night. She must have read my mind. ‘Yes…I’m sure they’ve gone.’ She wanted to persuade me that we had no further reason to stay here, but, just to be sure, I went up to the lighted window and peered in. The room was empty. I rang the doorbell again. Finally, someone was coming. The instant the door opened a crack, in a ray of light, I saw the little girl’s face fill with awful disappointment. It was her father. He was wearing a coat.
    â€˜Have you been here for long?’ he asked in a tone of polite indifference. ‘Do you want to come in?’
    He spoke to us as if we were visitors who had called by unannounced.
    He leaned over to the little girl. ‘So, did you have a nice long walk?’
    She didn’t answer.
    â€˜My wife has left to have dinner with some friends,’ he said, ‘and I was just about to join her.’
    The little girl hesitated before going inside. She looked at me one last time and said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ her tone apprehensive, as if she wasn’t sure whether I’d come back. Monsieur Valadier was smiling vaguely. Then the door shut behind them.
    I stood, not moving, on the other side of the boulevard, under the trees. On the second floor, a light went on in the window of the little girl’s room. Soon, I saw Monsieur Valadier hurry out of the house. He got into a black car. She must have been alone in the house and left a light on so she could go to sleep. I thought of how lucky we’d been: a little later, and no one would have come to open the door.

ON THE FOLLOWING Sunday—or the Sunday after that—I went back to Vincennes. I wanted to go earlier than I had the other times, before nightfall. This time I got out at the end of the line, at Château de Vincennes. It was sunny that autumn Sunday and, once again, as I wandered past the château and turned into Rue du Quartier-de-Cavalerie, I felt as if I was in a provincial town. I was the only person out walking, and at the top of the street, behind a wall, I heard the clopping of horses’ hooves.
    I slipped into a daydream about what might have been: after many years away, I had just got off the train at a little station in my ‘home country’. I can’t remember which book it was where I first came across the expression ‘home country’. Those two words must have connected with something thataffected me deeply or else stirred up a memory. After all, in my childhood, I had also known a country railway station, where I used to arrive from Paris, wearing that label around my neck, with my name written on it.
    As soon as I caught sight of the apartment block at the end of the street, my dream vanished. There was no such thing as my