This is Life

At eight thirty in the morning, Aurélie Renard sat on a bench in the garden at the centre of the Place des Vosges. She had not slept well.

It had been almost midnight by the time she and Herbert had got back to her apartment the night before. As they headed home from the bus stop, Aurélie had stopped to buy a kebab. This was something she did every once in a while, and normally she thought nothing of it, but it hadn’t seemed quite right having a baby with her as she waited alongside the motley collection of late-night customers for her pitta bread to rise.

When they had at last made it home, it had taken her a long time to get the baby settled. She realised he didn’t have pyjamas, so after she had put him in a fresh nappy and brushed his teeth, procedures he yielded to with nonchalance, she dressed him in his new Eiffel Tower top and Mona Lisa trousers. Their fabric was soft, and she hoped he would be comfortable.

He was wide awake, and showed no sign of wanting to go to sleep. She hummed fragments of lullabies to him, she read him passages from inappropriate books, and she cuddled him, but nothing would wind him down. He seemed hell bent on staying up for an all-nighter. She didn’t like the idea of him sleeping on the floor, and had decided to have him by her side in bed. Hoping to inspire him to become at least a little bit tired, she turned off the main light, leaving only the kitchen spotlight on, with the door open so she could just about see. She tucked him under the duvet, and he lay there staring at her.

This was the first time they had spent time together without there being some kind of immediate drama about the situation. It was nice, but even so it was time to sleep. It had been an extremely long day. She took a close look at him. The bruise hadn’t got any bigger, which was a relief. She closed her eyes, and hoped this would encourage him to start thinking about drifting off. It didn’t work. He rolled towards her, and kept patting her face. She took his hands in hers, and not for the first time she marvelled at the difference in size. Then she closed her eyes again, and once again he patted her face until they re-opened. His eyes were open wide in the near darkness, and he looked beautiful.

‘You are a handsome boy, Herbert,’ she said. She knew it made no sense, but she felt proud of him. He pulled a face and made some noises in return. Some of them almost sounded like words.

She wondered what on earth his mother was doing, handing over her beautiful boy to a complete stranger for a week, no matter how kind that stranger’s face. She must have been having a breakdown. She had certainly been acting strangely, her mood shifting every few seconds. If that was the case, Aurélie told herself, then she was doing valuable social work, taking the pressure off a stressed mother, allowing her some breathing space. Maybe the call she had made had been to her therapist, who had told her that handing the baby over to a stranger who had just thrown a stone at his face was a terrific idea, that it would give her just the opportunity she needed to relax. She hoped that when the week was up and the time had come to hand him back, she would find her fully refreshed and ready to take care of her son again.

It was half past one by the time he finally fell asleep, and Aurélie at last began to drift off. She was jolted awake by the sound of her phone’s ringtone. She had recently changed it, and realised now that she hadn’t made a good choice. It was an ear-shattering sequence of apparently unrelated beeps. As she leaned over the side of the bed and fumbled to find the phone in her bag, she heard a gurgle. Herbert had been woken by the noise, and was rubbing his eyes and looking around in the darkness. Aurélie found the phone, but it had already stopped ringing and had gone to voice mail. She checked it.

It was Sylvie. She had remembered the piece of child-rearing advice she had once heard, and was calling to pass it on: Sleep whenever the baby sleeps, because when they’re awake you won’t have a chance.

‘Thanks for that,’ croaked Aurélie, into the unlistening phone. ‘Goodnight.’

‘Go back to sleep, Herbert,’ she said gently. She rubbed his tummy. ‘Go back to sleep.’

Aurélie had managed three and a half hours’ sleep when she was woken by a tiny hand on her face. It took her a while to realise what was going on, and when the events of the day before replayed in her mind she felt a knot in her stomach. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. For the first time that day, and it would by no means be the last, she wondered what she had got herself into.

He didn’t have to answer. She could tell by looking at him that he was very well indeed. There was a big smile across his face, and he was ready for the day. All she had to do was get him through it. She recalled that on the bus home the night before she had written a list of the important things to keep on top of when taking care of an approximately nine-month-old baby. They were:

1. Food

2. Drink

3. Nappy

4. Teeth

She had bought a spare baby bottle at the supermarket and, still coming to, she left Herbert on the bed as she got it ready. She boiled some water in a pan and dropped the bottle in, sterilising it just in case, and she put an egg in beside it for herself. Once the bottle had cooled down a bit she filled it with his special milk. She took it through to him, and he latched on to it quite happily.

While he was getting on with that, she got his breakfast ready: a jar of puréed fruit and rice. She dipped her finger in and tried a bit, to see if it tasted as revolting as it looked. It was a lot nicer than she had anticipated, and she needed to exercise a surprising amount of self-control to keep from taking a big scoop for herself.

She propped Herbert into a sitting position, and fed him. He finished the lot with gusto. Then he took the bottle again, and when he had had enough he dropped it on to the bed. She found his toothbrush, and cleaned his teeth, and then she changed his nappy, which was heavy after his night’s sleep.

She had done everything on the list. Looking after a baby was a lot easier than she had ever thought it would be, and she wondered why people made such a fuss about it.

Feeling a little self-conscious with Herbert watching her from the bed, she undressed and attempted the world’s fastest shower. She stepped under the water, shampooed her hair, rinsed it, and had begun to rub shower gel over her body when from the bedroom came a loud thump, followed by a horrible, yet familiar, silence.

By the time Aurélie had made it through to the bedroom Herbert was crying his heart out, face down on the floor beside the bed. Frantic, she scooped him up and tried to console him. His makeshift pyjamas got wet as she pressed him to her body. She checked him for signs of bruising. There didn’t seem to be any new marks on his head or face, which was a relief. She hoped he hadn’t broken any bones. She would have to wait and see. She held him close, and whispered to him, and told him she was sorry, and that it was all her fault.

It took a long while for his wails to turn to sobs, and the sobs to mild grizzling and his mild grizzling to a sullen demeanour. She checked his bones by running her fingers along his arms and legs and pressing on various parts of his body. He seemed OK. She built him a nest of pillows on the bed, hoping it would stop him from rolling off again, then she jumped back into the shower, which had been running all this time, to rinse off the shower gel. She dried herself, and pulled on some clothes. At last, Herbert was smiling again. He was fine. She lay down beside him, and looked at him, and he looked at her.

Aurélie had managed to get Herbert upstairs twice and downstairs once without passing anybody. Their isolation from the neighbours had been a small miracle, but now the miracle was over. The knocking continued. ‘Open up, I know you’re in there.’ Aurélie recognised the voice of the woman from across the hall, strident for someone who must have been at least ninety years old. It was Old Widow Peypouquet.

Like everybody else in the building, Aurélie had no idea that Old Widow Peypouquet had never lost a husband. She had never even married, but even so everything about her screamed widow. On the day she had moved in, it had not entered the concierge’s mind that she could be anything other than a widow. On being asked about the new neighbour by existing tenants, he had casually referred to her as Old Widow Peypouquet, and because of the way she dressed and carried herself, nobody had thought for a moment that this was in any way far-fetched, and so that was what she had been known as ever since. She was unaware that this had been going on for the preceding two decades; as far as she knew, to them she was merely Madame Peypouquet, as this was how they addressed her to her face.

The people who lived there were decent folk by and large, and none of them wanted to intrude on a widow’s sorrow. Beyond showing her everyday politeness, they left her alone. Hello, Madame Peypouquet, they would respectfully say as they passed her on the stairs. They rarely engaged her in further conversation but she wasn’t to know that this was because they had no idea what else they could possibly say to her. All the words they thought of seemed somehow inappropriate for one who was evidently in such deep mourning, and they stopped themselves before they came out. No matter how they phrased their questions in their minds, in essence they were all the same: Hello, Madame Peypouquet. How are you coping now that your husband is in the ground? They chose instead to make no enquiries, hoping their smiles and gentle greetings would be enough to provide her with at least a little warmth to help her through her bleak, empty days.

Even the few people who passed through the building who could not be counted as decent folk gave her no trouble. After all, it was never good luck to get on a widow’s bad side – nobody wants to be tormented by the protective ghost of a dead husband. And so she had lived there, year in and year out, with nobody really getting to know her.

Aurélie had been the same as everyone else. She had greeted her on the occasions when their paths had crossed, and sometimes they had gone as far as exchanging comments on the weather, but that was all. Aurélie had no idea that Old Widow Peypouquet had taken quite an interest in the girl from the apartment across the landing.

‘I’m coming, Madame Peypouquet,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

She opened the door just a crack. ‘Hello, Madame Peypou-quet,’ she said. ‘How are you today?’ At once Aurélie regretted the question. Every day must have been a living hell for Old Widow Peypouquet as she lamented the loss of her husband, and to enquire after her wellbeing had been tactless.

‘A baby? No. There’s no baby here.’ She opened the door and swept her arm around, indicating the entire apartment in a single gesture. She had folded the buggy and put it in the shower, and put all the other incriminating evidence on the bed and thrown the duvet over it. There was no sign of a baby.

‘Yes. Now, you have a good day, Madame Peypouquet. I think it’s going to be sunny.’

‘Yes. Well, it’s got off to a clear start. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mademoiselle Renard, but I could have sworn I heard a baby’s cries coming from your apartment, and I’ve been wondering what was going on, that’s all. You will forgive an old woman’s curiosity.’

‘OK, yes, you are quite old.’ Aurélie was about to close the door when a gurgle came from the other side of the room. Before she could do anything about it, Old Widow Peypouquet had invited herself in, and was looking around for the source of the noise. She soon found it, lying on a blanket on the floor on the far side of the bed: Herbert.

‘What’s this, then?’ she asked, pointing a bony finger. ‘What’s this if it’s not a baby?’

‘Oh, that? It’s, well, you know . . .’ Her mind raced as she tried to think of a reasonable explanation.

‘A baby? That thing?’ Aurélie faked a laugh. ‘No, that’s not a baby.’

They stood looking down at Herbert, who smiled up at them, and expanded on his previous gurgling. Aurélie was about to panic when the brainwave struck. She was out of trouble. ‘It’s rubber,’ she said.

Old Widow Peypouquet scrutinised Herbert, who was looking up at her with his big blue eyes. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, Madame Peypouquet. It’s all rather embarrassing, and I was hoping you wouldn’t find out.’

‘I know. It’s quite incredible really. It’s a wonder of modern science.’

Aurélie recalled Sylvie’s tales of the years of her childhood when her only friend had been a Tamagotchi, and her thoughts began to fall into place. ‘Madame Peypou-quet, please sit down. I have something to tell you.’ Old Widow Peypouquet lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, and Aurélie continued. ‘I’m broody. I really want to have a baby of my own.’

‘A baby? But you’re not ready. You don’t even have a husband. As far as I can see you don’t even have a boyfriend. There was that handsome boy, the tall one who came to see you a few months ago, but I’ve not seen him since.’

‘No,’ said Aurélie. ‘No, he didn’t. And I’m so glad you understand my problem. I went to the doctor, and told him that even though I don’t have a boyfriend I’m desperate to have a child, and he gave me this. It’s a computerised baby simulator. It’s full of wires and things like that. I have it for a week so I can find out exactly what’s involved in looking after a baby, and then I’ll be able to make an informed decision about whether or not to have a real one myself. They’re hoping it’ll put me off the idea, for the time being at least.’

‘Yes. And the technology makes it do lots of babylike things. All the babylike things, in fact. It cries in the middle of the night, it demands to be fed . . .’

‘Milk, baby food.’ She realised what she was saying, and came to her own rescue. ‘It’s a sort of electronic computer milk. And computer food. It’s all very scientific, and I don’t quite understand it. Somewhere inside is a microchip the size of a grain of sugar, and it records everything that happens to it, and at the end of the week I’ll take it back and they’ll plug it into a computer and it’ll give me a mark out of ten for my parenting skills.’

Old Widow Peypouquet was silent for a while. ‘May I have a closer look at it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Aurélie bent down and scooped him up. ‘Here it is.’ Herbert was looking around the room. He smiled at Old Widow Peypouquet, who still looked suspicious.

A bony hand reached out and grabbed the baby’s leg. ‘Hmmm . . . It looks right, but it doesn’t feel right. It feels too rubbery. I can’t believe some of the things they make these days. I tell you – things were different in my day. I only hope it does its job, Mademoiselle Renard. Your time to have a child will come, though. Why not invite that handsome boy here again? Just be sure and wait until you’re married to him before you get one of these though.’

‘That’s very good advice, Madame Peypouquet. Oh, and please don’t tell anyone else about this. I’m a little ashamed about the whole business.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘And it is rather a delicate medical matter, so confidentiality is paramount.’

‘Of course. One last thing, though. What’s its name, this rubber baby?’ But before Aurélie could answer, Old Widow Peypouquet made a disgusted face, and held her nose. ‘Vive la France! The manufacturers have gone too far – no real child makes smells as awful as that.’

Old Widow Peypouquet shuffled out of the apartment, and Aurélie shut the door behind her. She gave Herbert a big cuddle. Already she was quite used to the extraordinary aromas he was capable of producing. ‘That was close,’ she said. She was feeling claustrophobic, and knew then that they had to stay out of the building as much as possible.

Fifteen minutes later, Herbert was in a clean nappy and proper clothes, and just as they were about to leave she glanced around the room and saw, lying as innocently as anything on her bedside table, Sylvie’s gun. Old Widow Peypouquet couldn’t have noticed it, as she had said nothing. She picked it up. She didn’t feel as confident about it as she had the night before. It seemed a lot heavier, and more awkward in her hand. She put it in her bag, but it seemed to weigh her down, as if it was telling her to leave it at home, that only trouble would come if she took it out with her. Resolving to stick to only well-lit public places, she opened a drawer, took the gun out of her bag and hid it under some clothes.

She and Herbert left the apartment, and soon they were at the foot of the stairs. Just as she was about to leave the building, she heard a man’s voice. ‘Ah, it’s the rubber baby.’

She turned to see Monsieur Simoneaux from the second floor, standing in his pyjamas and slippers, his grey hair wild, as if he had only just woken up. Monsieur Simon-eaux’s grey hair always looked like this, and she had only ever seen him in his pyjamas and slippers. She had often wondered whether he owned any proper clothes. He must have heard them coming down the stairs, and rushed out to see the phenomenon. News of the delicate medical matter had already reached that far.

Monsieur Simoneaux approached the buggy, and looked at Herbert. ‘Amazing,’ he said. He reached out and pinched the baby’s cheeks a little bit too hard. Herbert pulled a face. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘He looks very realistic, but Old Widow Peypouquet’s right – he doesn’t feel like the real thing. He feels too rubbery to be a proper baby. I have an idea – let’s find out what happens if you grab him by the ankles and smash him against the wall.’ He crouched down and squinted as he searched for the buckle that would release him from his buggy.

Aurélie wrestled him away. ‘Er, no, Monsieur Simon-eaux. Please don’t. I would lose points if you did that.’

‘Then maybe we could throw him to one another for a while, like a rugby ball?’

‘Best not to. I’m not that good at catching, and it would be picked up on the microchip. I’d lose points.’

‘We could go to the top floor and dangle him out the window, like Michael Jackson did that time. I bet that wouldn’t be picked up by the computer. And if we drop him, it won’t matter too much. He’s only rubber, after all.’

‘No, Monsieur Simoneaux. I have my score to consider, so no smashing, no throwing and no dangling. Please. And if we break him, I’ll be liable for the cost of a replacement.’

Monsieur Simoneaux sighed. ‘Fair enough.’ He scratched his head and looked a little rueful. ‘To be honest, I was trying to lower your score. Old Widow Peypouquet asked me to see what I could do to help. She’d prefer you to fare badly. She’s worried that if you do well you’ll get yourself a real baby, and she’s convinced you’re not ready.’

‘It’s nice of her to be concerned,’ said Aurélie, ‘but I think I’ll be getting a low enough score without anyone’s help.’

‘I hate to go back to Old Widow Peypouquet without any kind of result, though. She was almost weeping with concern for you, Mademoiselle Renard. She said she doesn’t want to see you make a terrible decision. I promised her I would do whatever I could. Could you not just put him on the floor and let me stamp on his head a couple of times?’

‘Very well. I have to say though, he’s quite a machine.’ He smiled and nodded his approval of this technological wonder. ‘It’s just as well he’s only rubber. It’s close to zero outside this morning, and he hasn’t got a hat on. If he were real he would freeze to death in minutes. And so will I if I don’t get back in my apartment. As you can see, I’m only wearing my pyjamas and slippers. I’ve not put on my proper clothes yet. I do have proper clothes, you know.’

‘I’m sure you do, Monsieur Simoneaux.’ Aurélie said goodbye, and she and Monsieur Simoneaux hurried away in opposite directions. He had been right about the weather – summer was definitely over. She reflected that if Herbert really had been a rubber trial baby, she would have lost points for taking him outside bare-headed. Monsieur Simoneaux had missed a trick there – the built-in thermometer would have recorded her mistake.

While she waited for the bus to come she felt her way through the baby’s bag in search of his hat, which she put on his head. As she did so, she was haunted by l’esprit de l’escalier: she would have saved a lot of bother if she hadn’t hidden Herbert from Old Widow Peypouquet, and had just told her that she was looking after the baby for a friend who was out of town for a few days. It would have made a lot more sense. The bus came, and they struggled on.

It was still too early for the shops to be open, but she was going to head for Le Marais anyway. She wanted to get Herbert some slightly more normal outfits than yesterday’s effort, and she knew there were some children’s boutiques around there. And besides, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his mother’s scarf. She had been spending so much that money had almost become abstract, and she decided she might as well treat herself. She was going to find La Foularderie. She planned to be waiting on their front step when they opened.

It had been miserable walking the streets of Le Marais with all the shops shut. The last time she had been in the area she had been with Sylvie on a typically busy Sunday afternoon, and they had gone from shop to shop looking at clothes, shoes and all kinds of things they couldn’t afford. For some reason they had both been fixating on expensive chairs that day. It was only later, over falafels, that she found out that Sylvie had recently worked for one of the shops they had gone into, a high-class stationer. When she had left the job, the owner had refused to give her a day’s pay that she was due. She never let anybody get away with ripping her off, so on this trip she had stolen stock worth three times as much as she was owed, to get her own back. She had also, without Aurélie noticing, discreetly taken a bottle of ink and emptied it on to the carpet. ‘Nasty bosses deserve to be screwed over,’ she said, smiling, and Aurélie had to agree. She showed off her haul – two fancy pens, a novelty pencil sharpener and a silver-plated letter opener. She gave one of the pens to Aurélie, who was delighted to be a part of Sylvie’s deft and righteous revenge.

That had been a good day, but it had been no fun seeing all the shops with their lights out. A few key holders had come in early, and were shuffling around as they prepared for the day, but nowhere was open for business. She looked for La Foularderie, but she couldn’t find it. She would ask someone later on.

She made her way to the Place des Vosges, lit a cigarette, put the used match back into the box and thought about how her project was going. It wasn’t going very well at all, and it was only then that she realised she had come to the wrong place to dwell on that. The square was lined with commercial galleries containing work by artists who had made it, or who at least had made it far enough to have their work on sale in the Place des Vosges. She had walked around these galleries on happier days and seen pieces with big price tags. She had never been interested in the show business side of art, but she was neither wealthy nor stupid, and she realised that if she was going to take her work seriously she would have to make at least some money from it as she went along. She tried to picture her current project fitting into one of these galleries, and it didn’t even begin to. It was stupid and misconceived, and so far it had been poorly executed too; she wasn’t drawing nearly as well as she knew she could.

She decided not to depress herself by taking Herbert to look in the galleries’ windows. In the past she had been very impressed with a lot of the work she had seen there, work that had a point, or beauty, sometimes even both. She could really imagine people wanting some of these pieces in their homes, and the thought made her all the more disappointed in her own efforts. Nobody would want to look at it for a moment, let alone own it. She had given up on the idea of her project ever being a triumph: throwing stones at babies was never going to make for good art. Who in their right mind would ever want to hang a picture of a wounded child on their wall?

She didn’t want to be kicked out of college. It would break her dad’s heart. She had no choice but to carry on – even if the project was doomed to fail, she wasn’t going to give up on it. If she could just make it good enough to get the mark she needed to pass her year she would be OK.

Herbert had fallen asleep, and she stubbed out her cigarette, put the butt in the matchbox and brought out her sketchbook. It would be yet another drawing of a sleeping baby, but it was going to be the best one yet.

When the concept had first struck her, as she had waited for her appointment with Professor Papavoine, she had imagined her stone bouncing gently from the shoulder of someone who would make an ideal subject. Her number one choice would have been a Jesus-type, a tall, handsome man with shaggy hair and a beard, and with eyes that were at once piercing and warm. He would invite her into his hygienically Bohemian life for a week, taking her back to his large apartment where he would recline naked on the parquet reading Balzac and de Beauvoir as she drew pictures and took photographs of him before putting her pencil and camera away, and taking off her own clothes to join him in a union of the artistic and the sexual. And when the week was over he would ask to see her again, and she would think for a while and say, Maybe.

Even as she had been imagining this scenario, she had known that it wasn’t going to happen. It was just a daydream. The other possible subjects she had hoped for, these ones a touch more realistic, were an incredibly photogenic old person so she could somehow trace their personal history through their day-to-day activities, or someone from a marginalised ethnic minority so she could document their trials and triumphs, or even a worn-down office worker so she could follow a narrative trail through the most humdrum working week imaginable. It wouldn’t even have been too bad if her stone had hit The Russian. Then she would at least have found out how he spent the rest of his day. At no point had she imagined that her subject would be a baby, let alone that she would be in sole charge of that baby.

It was falling apart on so many levels. The most obvious difficulty was that a baby’s activities are very limited, and she was personally orchestrating his every movement. An adult would have gone here and there under their own steam, around a life that they had carved out for themselves. She could have captured them at home, at work and at play. But not Herbert. Herbert was just a baby, and the project was supposed to be all about exploring other people’s choices as they navigated the world around them. He was a cute baby, very cute, but that was all he was: a baby. He had people, in this case her, to make his decisions for him. She couldn’t even draw him at play in his own home. It was all wrong.

He was always there, as well. If the stone had hit somebody else, anybody but a baby, she would have been able to maintain at least some distance from them. There would have been opportunities for them to have a break from one another. She would have been able to get some sleep, and it would have been unlikely that she would have had to wipe them down after they’d gone to the toilet.

Something Aurélie Renard was coming to learn was that there is a certain kind of old woman who has granted herself a licence to take an aggressive interest in babies with whom they have no personal connection. It is as if these old women spend their days doing nothing but walking around public places looking out for them and, uninvited, leaning over their buggies and offering exuberant compliments. Most of them will leave it at this, but there are some who don’t know when to stop, who will take too much of an interest in the child, an interest which manifests itself in the offering of unsolicited and long outmoded advice, and the asking of all sorts of personal questions, the answers to which couldn’t possibly be considered any of their business.

Aurélie’s experience with Old Widow Peypouquet, as well as her encounters with various old women on the street and on buses, had taught her that she was going to have to get used to these assaults, and assess each one as it occurred and deal with it in the best way she could. She had found that the most efficient thing to do was to agree with everything they said, no matter how ridiculous, and wait for them to move away. So far she had assured one old lady that she would wrap Herbert in vinegar-soaked brown paper at the first sign of a runny nose, nodded while another told her to prevent him from becoming homosexual by sending him to boxing lessons the moment he could walk, and bowed her head in insincere admiration as yet another boasted about how all nine of her children had been fully potty-trained by the time they were Herbert’s age. She had even disguised her indignation at the implicit swipes at her mothering abilities. It was relentless.

She had no idea how long she had been asleep when a nearby presence roused her. A shadow had fallen over Herbert. She looked up and, sure enough, there was the latest old woman.

She was staring at him, and smiling. She saw that Aurélie had woken up. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ she asked.

Aurélie rubbed her eyes. She was still half asleep, and her question, while simple, seemed so stupid that Aurélie wondered if there was a trick to it. ‘Er . . .’ She looked at Herbert. He was a boy, wasn’t he? She thought back to changing his nappy. Yes, she wasn’t in any doubt. ‘He’s a boy.’

‘Er, yes.’ She wanted her to go away, but the old woman seemed to think that her presence was somehow welcome.

She addressed Herbert directly now. ‘Aren’t you a handsome boy?’ Seconds earlier she had not even known he was a boy. ‘Aren’t you?’

Aurélie decided she would tell the next old woman who asked after his gender that Herbert was a girl, just to see if they then went into raptures about how pretty he was.

He was still asleep, and the old woman’s voice was loud. Aurélie hoped she wouldn’t wake him up.

She spoke softly, almost whispering, in the hope that the old woman would follow her lead. ‘He’s Aquarius.’

‘Aquarius?’ If anything her voice was now even louder. ‘Which makes him . . .?’

Aurélie thought back to the souvenir shop. ‘Er . . . about nine months old. Roughly speaking.’

‘Yes.’ Aurélie looked at what she had done. It had been going well. ‘It’s only half done.’

The old woman said nothing, but her face registered her disapproval of Aurélie’s work. It really was time for her to go away.

She looked intently at the baby, and as she did, something about her changed. She was no longer a random old woman cooing over a baby in a public garden. There was something more threatening about her.

Aurélie started. She should have had an answer ready for this. There was no way she could tell the truth, so she scrambled for an answer. ‘He’s been fighting.’ The old woman stared at her, and she added, ‘You know what boys are like.’

The old woman stared at her. Aurélie decided she would use some of her concealer on Herbert, and if anyone noticed it she would tell them it was eczema.

Aurélie was stunned by the question. It went far beyond the usual level of interference. ‘Yes, of course he’s my baby.’ The old woman just stared at her. Aurélie wondered whether she had made herself clear enough, and carried on. ‘He came out of here,’ she said, pointing at the place from which babies emerge. Then she realised what she was doing, and remembered she was in a public garden. She folded her finger away.

The old woman seemed to accept this. She was quiet for a moment, then she said, ‘What’s his name?’

‘Herbert.’ She braced herself for the usual exchange, but this time it didn’t happen. The old woman pronounced it correctly first time.

‘That’s a good question. I’m glad you asked me.’ She raced to think of a plausible answer. ‘I called him Herbert because I thought it was a nice name.’

Aurélie realised she had no idea. She was beginning to panic under the weight of the old woman’s pitiless interrogation. She was tired, her defences were low, and she felt she had to say something. She wasn’t going to use her own name, so she used the first one that came to mind. ‘Cruchaudet-Gingembre,’ she said. She had no idea where that had come from. Even as the words were leaving her mouth she knew they sounded ridiculous.

‘Herbert Cruchaudet-Gingembre? The poor child. What a terrible start in life.’

‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘it is terrible.’ This old lady seemed more relentless than her other attackers. Nodding and agreeing was not enough to satisfy her.

‘Yes?’ she asked. ‘Yes? So you agree? Then why did you give him such a ridiculous name? I understand that you can’t choose his surname, but why Herbert? Why not Jean-Pierre, or Jean-Luc, or Jean-Louis, or Jean-Paul? Surely even Jean-Marcel would have been better than Herbert?’

For the first time, Aurélie found herself actually agreeing with an interfering old woman, rather than just pretending to agree. Herbert was a ridiculous name for a French baby, and she had to somehow formulate a defence of it off the top of her head. She hadn’t helped herself by saddling him with such a preposterous surname. ‘It just seemed like the right decision at the time.’

‘Well, it’s because . . .’ Aurélie had had enough. She wasn’t going to put up with this. ‘Oh, mind your own business, you nosey old bat. Get lost.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘That is the final straw. I am declaring you to be an unfit mother. This baby is not in safe hands, and I am taking him straight to the authorities.’

The old woman kicked off the buggy’s brake, and at high speed she made off with Herbert across the square.

He saw the baby first from the other side of the square. His eyes were drawn to the child, who was just waking up. There was something about him, about his serious expression and line of his brow that he found mesmerising. He was so absorbed by the sight of the boy that it was a while before he noticed the commotion surrounding him. The first participant he saw was the old woman, determinedly pushing the buggy across the square. And beside her, at first protesting, then trying to wrest control of the buggy, was the girl. The girl, the one he had been waiting for all his life. Until this moment he’d had no idea that he had been waiting for anyone all his life, but now he knew he had been, and here she was.

As they drew closer, this was confirmed. She was right before his eyes, arguing over a child with a bad-tempered old woman. His heart should have leapt, but instead it sank. Just moments earlier he had considered himself to be a lifelong loner, someone who would never lose his heart, someone for whom there was no love, just occasional sexual interludes that he regarded as a medical necessity as much as anything else. But now he realised this was not the case at all, that there was a girl out there he could love. His carapace had crumbled, and as it did he was exposed to the weakness it had been hiding. Every love song he had ever heard suddenly made sense, and at last he knew what people were talking about when they spoke of broken hearts: somebody else had found her first.

They drew closer to him, and he could see that this was no normal domestic argument. The girl was frantic. She looked up and saw him. She appealed to him.

She looked at him. He was tall, with shaggy hair and a short, full beard. He had eyes that were at once piercing and warm. There was no getting away from it – there was something Christ-like about him, though this Jesus was wearing jeans, training shoes and a black puffa jacket. Something about him seemed familiar, and comforting; it was as if they were already friends. If anyone was going to help her, it was him. Without a word he held up his hand, signalling them to stop, and they obeyed. He looked at the three of them for a long while.

‘Madame,’ he said to the old lady, ‘it is wrong to take people’s babies away.’

‘It is for the child’s own good. This young lady has no maternal instinct. I’ve seen evidence of this with my own eyes. First I saw her puffing on a cigarette with the child right beside her, then she fell fast asleep and the baby was sitting there completely unprotected. It’s unnatural for a mother to put her child at risk in this way. There are strange people out there, you know – people who are perverts for babies – and what’s more she doesn’t even know who the father is. And you should hear the name she’s given the poor child – Herbert Cruchaudet-Gingembre. I mean to say . . .’

Gently he put a finger to his lips, and the old woman stopped talking. He tried to hide his delight at this information about the girl’s personal life. If the father was out of the picture, maybe he could step in. ‘Go now,’ he said to the old woman.

‘I . . . well . . .’ She didn’t know what to do or say. ‘That poor child.’ She turned to Aurélie, and said, ‘Don’t go thinking I’m not going to report you anyway.’ She looked at the man, and said, ‘And look.’ She pointed. ‘His shoes are on the wrong feet.’ With a look of disgust, she went away.

Aurélie looked at Herbert’s feet, and realised with shame that the old woman was right. She really had put the shoes on the wrong way round. She crouched, took them off and swapped them over.

‘Thank you,’ Aurélie said, looking up at the man as she fastened the Velcro straps. With the old woman gone, she felt a rush of guilt. While she still considered her to have been a nosey old bat, she knew she had been right: she wasn’t fit to be in charge of a baby. She shouldn’t have been smoking so close to him, and she shouldn’t have fallen asleep while she was supposed to be taking care of him in a public place. There really were people out there who were perverts for babies. Maybe it would have been the best thing for everyone if the old woman had been able to hand the boy over to the authorities.

She looked at the baby, and thought again. No, she wasn’t going to let any interfering old bat take Herbert, and for as long as he was in her care she was never again going to leave home without the gun. When she got home she would put it in the big inside pocket of her coat, and there it would stay until Herbert was safely back with his mother. As her anger bubbled away, she told herself that if another old woman came for him she would shoot her kneecaps out sooner than allow her to take him away.

The man could see she was upset. ‘You’ve had a horrible experience,’ he said. ‘Come and sit down.’

They went over to a bench, and sat side-by-side. Aurélie looked at him, and he looked at Aurélie, and they both felt the same thing. They felt as if they had known one another all their lives. It was a feeling that was warm and, more than anything, overwhelmingly arousing.

Aurélie thought about the chain of events that had brought them together. If it hadn’t been for her project, this wouldn’t be happening. She supposed that there was something to be said for throwing stones at babies after all.

She showed him her half-finished picture of Herbert. He liked it very much. ‘It’s really . . .’ He didn’t finish his sentence.

It was the rarest of things – a kiss with no instigator. He didn’t kiss her, and she didn’t kiss him. They both just kissed. Aurélie clung on to him, and he held her as though she was a precious object. Which, to him, she was.

Minutes later, when at last their lips parted, they suddenly became keenly aware of the watching eyes of an approximately nine-month-old boy. The man felt it was time to introduce himself to his new acquaintances. ‘I’m Léandre,’ he said. ‘Léandre Martin.’

‘I know. Hello, Herbert,’ he said. He too had pronounced his name correctly first time. Aurélie felt that things were getting better in a big way. ‘Herbert . . .’ He looked sceptical. ‘Herbert Cruchaudet-Gingembre?’

‘Er . . .’ Aurélie thought she had better come clean. ‘No. That’s not his real surname.’

‘I was lying to the old woman. I didn’t think his name was any of her business, so I made one up.’

‘No.’ She told him the truth. ‘He’s not my baby. He’s . . .’ She wondered whether her new boyfriend, if that’s what he was, was quite ready to hear the whole truth. ‘I’m looking after him for a friend who’s out of town for a few days.’

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