Saturday, 3 p.m.

On Wednesday the 18th of November, the blue book came back with two more words, beneath my “Liar” and its little heart.

“Not a liar. Scared.”

And the catapult, very small, like someone hanging his head.

I read those words between Namur and Gembloux, and something in me tipped over, gently, like a glass tilted until the water spills. I was thirty-one. I'd promised not to fall in love again before forty. I still had nearly nine years left to hold out. And there I was in carriage 4, with a blue book on my lap, telling myself I wouldn't last another year.