Perdu cooked, swam, drank very little, kept a regular sleep routine and met up with the other boules players every day. He continued to write letters. He worked on The Great Encyclopedia of Small Emotions, and in the evenings he worked at the bookshop, selling books to people in beach shorts.
He had altered his method of matching books to readers. He often asked, ‘How would you like to feel when you go to sleep?’ Most of his customers wanted to feel light and safe.
He asked others to tell him about their favourite things. Cooks loved their knives. Estate agents loved the jangle made by a bunch of keys. Dentists loved the flicker of fear in their patients’ eyes; Perdu had guessed as much.
Most often he asked, ‘How should the book taste? Of ice cream? Spicy, meaty? Or like a chilled rosé?’ Food and books were closely related. He discovered this in Sanary, and it earned him the nickname ‘the book epicure’.
He finished renovating the little house in the second half of August. He shared it with a morose, stripy stray tomcat, which never meowed, never purred and would only visit in the evening. It could be relied on to stretch out next to his bed and glower at the door. From this position the cat would guard the sleeping Perdu.
He tried to call it Olson, but because the animal bared its fangs at this name, he settled on Psst.
Jean Perdu didn’t wish to leave a woman guessing about his feelings again – even if he himself could only guess at what his feelings were. He was still in the in-between zone, and any new beginning lay shrouded in mist. He couldn’t say where he would be at the same time the next year. All he knew was that he must continue along this path until he found its destination. So he’d written to Catherine, as he had begun to do while on the waterways and since he had been in Sanary – every three days in fact.
Samy had counselled him: ‘Try your phone for once. Amazing little device, I’m telling you.’
So one evening he picked up the mobile and dialled a number in Paris. Catherine needed to know who he was: a man caught between darkness and light. You become someone else when your loved ones die.
‘Number 27. Hello? Who’s there? Say something!’
‘Madame Rosalette … Had your hair dyed recently?’ he asked hesitantly.
‘Oh! Monsieur Perdu, how …’
‘Do you know Madame Catherine’s number?’
‘Of course I do. I know every number in the building, every single one. Now, Madame Gulliver upstairs …’
‘Could you give me it?’
‘Madame Gulliver’s? What on earth for?’
‘No, chère Madame. Catherine’s.’
‘Oh. Yes. You write to her a lot, don’t you? I know because Madame carries the letters around with her. They fell out of her bag once. I couldn’t help seeing. It was the day Monsieur Goldenberg …’
He chose not to press her to give him the number, and instead allowed Madame Rosalette’s gossip to wash over him. Gossip about Madame Gulliver, whose new coral-red mules made an awful showy clatter on the stairs. About Kofi, who had decided to study political science. About Madame Bomme, who’d had a successful eye operation and no longer needed a magnifying glass for reading. And Madame Violette’s balcony concert: wonderful! Someone had shot a – what’s it called? – a video and put it on that internet thing, and other people had clacked on it a lot or something, and now Madame Violette was famous.
‘Clicked?’
‘That’s what I said.’
And, oh yes, Madame Bernard had converted the attic and wanted to let some artist move in. And his fiancé. His fiancé! How about a sea horse while he was at it?
Perdu held the mobile away from his ear so that she wouldn’t hear his laughter. As Madame Rosalette nattered on and on, Jean could think of only one thing: Catherine kept his letters and carried them around with her. Fa-bu-lous, as the concierge would say.
After what felt like hours she finally dictated Catherine’s number to him.
‘We all miss you, Monsieur,’ Madame Rosalette said. ‘I hope you’re no longer so terribly sad?’
He clenched his fist around the phone.
‘Not any more. Thank you,’ he said.
‘Don’t mention it,’ Madame Rosalette said quietly before she hung up.
He tapped in Catherine’s number and, closing his eyes, raised the mobile phone to his ear. It rang once, twice …
‘Hello?’
‘Um … it’s me.’
It’s me? Crumbs, how was she supposed to know who ‘it’s me’ was, for goodness’ sake?
‘Jean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh my God.’
He heard Catherine gasp and put the phone down. She blew her nose and came back on the line.
‘I didn’t expect you to ring.’
‘Should I hang up?’
‘Don’t you dare!’
He smiled. From her silence he figured that she must be smiling too.
‘How …’
‘What …’
They’d spoken at the same time. They laughed.
‘What are you reading at the moment?’ he asked softly.