That morning the newly installed heating boiler had been lit. The disagreeable noise it made – a sort of spasmodic hiccup – was in no way connected to my memories of Doncières, but its prolonged encounter with them inside me that afternoon was to force it into such an affinity with them that, after I thought I had more or less forgotten it, whenever I heard the central heating, it would bring them back to me.
So it isz not just the cupcakes which trigger the memory outbursts.
