Bastille DayThough she increasingly listened to it with half an ear, Suzanne always turned on the radio first thing in the morning, turning it off only when she went out. It was a presence, a voice she had neither to heed nor to respond to. It was perfect company.
On the radio that morning, much of the talk was about the Greek crisis and America’s nuclear agreement with Iran – very little about Bastille Day. Not so long ago, Suzanne would have followed attentively the debates over what Greece ought to do, whether Germany was misbehaving, and who in the match Obama had been playing with the Mullahs had come out the winner. She used to think she had some grasp of what was going on in the world. Now that she recognised she had none, her interest in world events had dwindled, with one excepti
