‘It’s so hot in here. Are you working hard, Hélène? You did nothing all last year. Look at what a mess your hair is. You look five years older than you are with your hair pulled back like that, I have no desire to be burdened with a daughter to marry off. Oh, Max, stop turning round in circles like a caged animal! Hélène, ask them to bring us some tea.’

‘At this hour?’

‘Well, what time is it, then?’

‘Seven o’clock. I was expecting you earlier.’

‘You can surely wait an hour for your mother. Ah, how ungrateful children are. Just like everyone else in the world. There’s not a single soul who loves you, who feels sorry for you! Not one …’

‘Are you really someone we should feel sorry for?’ Hélène asked softly.

‘I’m dying of thirst,’ said Bella. She got a glass of water and drank it quickly. Her eyes were full of tears. When she put down the glass, Hélène saw her secretly shape her eyebrows with her finger and look anxiously at her face in the mirror: the tears were damaging her make-up.

‘This is becoming unbearable!’ Max muttered through tight lips.

‘Oh, really, is that what you think? And what about the night I spent waiting for you, while your friends and those women …’

‘What women?’ he said with a weary sigh. ‘You’d like to lock me behind closed doors so that I see, hear and live for nothing but you.’

‘Before …’

‘Yes, exactly, that was before! How can you not understand? We’re only young once, only free once. It might be all right to throw everything out of the window, your family, your past, your future, once … at twenty-four. But life goes on, people change, become more serious, wiser. Whereas you … you … You’re tyrannical, egotistical, demanding. You make yourself unbearable to others and to yourself. I’ve been unhappy recently, you can see that very well. I’m sad, tired of it all, irritable. You take no pity on me. Yet all I ask of you is one thing. Leave me alone! Don’t have me trailing behind you like a dog on a leash. Let me breathe!’

‘But what on earth is wrong with you? Imagine, Hélène. He hasn’t had any letters from his mother, no letters from his beloved mother. But is that my fault? I’m asking you, is that my fault?’

Max struck his fist angrily against the table. ‘Is this any business of the child’s? Oh, enough, enough of your tears! I swear to you, Bella, if you start crying again I’m going to leave and you’ll never see me again as long as I live. At least, in the past, you were as hard on yourself as you were on everyone else. That was rather attractive,’ he said more quietly. ‘In my heart I called you Medea. But now …’

‘Yes,’ mused Hélène, silent and invisible in the dark room, ‘you’re getting old.