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[...] Anyway it was the summer after we finished lycée and I went away with her family for the summer holidays, and her dad was there, staying at the house with us, and he swam with us, and drank with us, and smoked with us, and one day when I was washing my swimsuit in the laundry room he came up …

I’m very interested in catachresis, Clémentine is saying. [...] You know, like a euphemism, or a misnaming, or things that there are no names for. Mixed metaphors. Language is an imperfect tool, no matter what Flaubert thought.

I think about my bakery friend that afternoon, as I tidy up the house. How quickly he’s become a fixture in my life, a part of the day I look forward to, though I don’t even know his name, and now that we’ve established this familiarity it feels weird to acknowledge we don’t know something as funda…

While we wait in a long queue, my bakery friend gestures at the walls. Des petites annonces, he says, thoughtfully. That’s what’s missing. You used to have loads of little notes tacked up on the walls of the bakery, people selling things, or offering their services. Tutors, he says. Learn Spanish! …

Sunday night and I’m in the kitchen, washing the dishes that have piled up for far too many days. The wine glasses have reached the point where it looks like I’ve had a party. The biggest items are the last to do, the heavy pot I made pasta in, the wooden cutting board I sliced the cherry tomatoes …