When I found love, I told myself, that’s it, I’ve gone from justexisting to actuallyliving, and I swore to do whatever it took to ensure my joy would never end. My presence on earth now had a meaning, a vocation, and I had become someone special … Before that, I’d been an ordinary doctor pursuing an ordinary career, leading a humdrum existence without any real appetite, having the odd passionless affair that left no trace when it was over, meeting friends for drinks in the evening or for pleasant hikes in the forest at weekends – in short, routine as far as the eye could see, with the occasional unusual event, as vague and fleeting as a sense of déjà vu, which had no more effect on me than some trivial item in a newspaper … But when I met Jessica, I discovered the world; I might even say I gained access to the very essence of the world. I wanted to be as important to her as she was to me, to be worthy of her every concern, to occupy her every thought; I wanted her to be my groupie, my muse, my ambition; I wanted many things, and Jessica embodied all of them. The truth is that she was my star, she lit up the whole sky for me. I was as happy as a man could be. It was as if I just had to hold out my hand and summer would come early. A state of grace was a mere heartbeat away. Every kiss I received was like a vow. Jessica was my seismograph and my religion, a religion in which the dark side of things had no place, in which all the holy books could be summed up in a single verse:I love you … But in the past few weeks, doubt had crept into even those pious words. Jessica had stopped looking at me in the same way as before. I no longer recognised her. After ten years of marriage, I was aware that something was wrong with our relationship, and I hadn’t the slightest clue what it was, had no way of locating the source of the problem. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she would give a start, and it would take her at least a minute to realise that all I was trying to do was break through the wall she had built around herself. If I insisted, she would put her arms up like a barrier and tell me that now was not the time. Every word, every sigh upset her, pushed her that little bit further away from me.

My wife didn’t so much worry me as terrify me.

She had always been a fighter, had always battled for what she believed in, had always done all she could to make our lives better. Jessica and I had had ten wonderful years when everything had gone well, ten years of unbridled love, combining sensual passion and warm friendship.

I had met her in a brasserie on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. She was taking part in a seminar, and I was attending a conference. I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. I was near the front window, she was at the far end of the room, and we looked at each other in silence. Then we both smiled. She left first, along with her colleagues. I didn’t think I would see her again. In the evening, our paths crossed in the foyer of the hotel where her seminar and my co