I asked my mother to teach me French, but her face clouded over, and she said she couldn’t. ‘Why not?’ ‘It was nearly my downfall.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I persisted, whenever I could. But she only shook her head and muttered something about me being too young, that I’d find out all too soon, that it was nasty. ‘One day,’ she said finally, ‘I’ll tell you about Pierre,’ then she switched on the radio and ignored me for so long that I went back to bed.
