Your mother's book, or your father's.

I was twenty-two, with a bicycle far too big for me, bought second-hand from a student going home to Brittany who let me have it for the price of a train ticket. The saddle was too high, the bell no longer rang, and the basket was held on with wire. I adored it. It was the first thing I owned in Paris, apart from my suitcase.

Every morning I crossed the city to the office on rue de Rivoli. I came down rue Mouffetard braking with both feet, rode along the Seine, and always arrived late, cheeks burning and hair everywhere. Madame Perrin, the head of department, looked at the clock, then at me, and said nothing. I think she was fond of me. At lunchtime we ate our sandwiches on a bench in the Tuileries, and she told me about the war, which she had spent sewing parachutes.

It was on that bicycle that your father first saw me, one April morning, at the corner of rue Monge. He was crossing without looking, a newspaper under his arm, and I no longer know which of us stopped first. He always claimed he was the one who braked. It isn't true: it was me, and I nearly fell off. He helped me put the chain back on, his hands black with grease, and he was late for work too.

The following Saturday, he was waiting at the same corner. He had brought croissants, and a screwdriver for the bell. It worked for years after that. We kept the bicycle until we moved to Quiberon; then it stayed in the garage, and it was you, children, who learned to ride on it, each in turn.

When I think back to that year, it isn't the office I see, or even your father at the corner. It's coming down rue Mouffetard at half past seven, the stallholders setting out their crates, the smell of bread and fish mixed together, and me shouting “watch out!” for want of a bell. I felt as though the whole city was stepping aside to let me through.