I have never been to your family home. I very nearly met your parents when your mother left a diamond ring on the bedside table: she could feel the wind turning. I caught a glimpse of her only once. It was summer, Cours Victor-Hugo. Joséphine looks sexy in that tight dress, I said to you later. You didn’t like that. You could have said the same about my mother, though. I wondered why you told me about the ring: you never wanted to get married. Our unsatiable love making. You now have a boyfriend, Antonin, a drama student you send food parcels to. He is obsessed with me. I unfriended him on FB: he has no Latin. You love playing chamber music with his mother. Your mother has dementia unlike mine, who is dead. I have never met your parents, but you sent me photos of the forest fire that reached your doors two years ago. Photos of your bedroom, your single bed. Age 15, you asked for a bigger bed. Your mother: I’ll move into your room if you ask again. So you had sex with boys in bigger beds. When I ring your house to say that my mother has died, the first thing Joséphine asks is: do you have children? She seems pleased that I don't. I bite hard into your armpit. You don’t come to the funeral. Another ex, who has never met my mother, helps me write the eulogy. Antonin hassles you for sex. You say I am the only one, then go back to Proust, send me pictures of tomatoes ripening in the garden, home-made pralines and that grotesque gâteau. Your mum might be dead and you in small pieces now. I burn all your letters.