I have always wanted to have an office, but since my husband and I move house a lot, I have learned to create my little working space wherever we are. When we came to Paris a year ago, I thought of turning the spare room into a bureau, but as we frequently have friends and family staying over, I decided to set up camp in a corner of our bedroom. I have a most exceptional view over the Eiffel Tower and because I know that sooner or later we will have to move again, I cherish it deeply. Sometimes I sit down to write at 7 am, when Paris is still asleep and the first lonely joggers start arriving at the Champ-de-Mars, and sometimes I turn my computer off when the Tower is performing her last light show at midnight.

I would love to write at regular hours, but having a small child at home, I tend to do it at odd moments, when I find some silence and solitude. I translate every weekday from 9 am to 6 pm, when my son is at school, and whenever he takes a nap during the weekend — I have had to build my working schedule around his needs and rhythms. When I lived on my own, I used to work through the night, smoking endless pensive cigarettes, listening to film soundtracks or classical music. Now, I prefer silence and I don’t smoke anymore, but I use a ridiculous piece of paper rolled up in the shape of a cigarette propped between my fingers to help me concentrate. I drink tea all day to keep me awake and stop me from lying on the bed, which is just there, sprawling beside me.

On the wall, I have a board with two very special photographs of my son and I, and a few pictures I used in the writing of my third novel. I particularly like one in black and white which my father took in Guinea Bissau, in the late 1960s, of the women of Bambadinca washing clothes in the river. There is also a reproduction of a self-portrait by Dorothea Tanning, which has haunted me since I discovered it in 2001, and a couple of quotes from books I have read recently (the last one I have added is from Hélène Grimaud’s Leçons Particulières). Before my eyes, I have a list of the books I am due to translate and a list of the stories I want to write in the near future and which I have lined up in my mind. Behind me are some of my books — the bulk of my personal library is in Lisbon, in a dark empty room which is seldom used, and I imagine them chatting away in my absence.

I have lost track of how many Ikea bookcases and tables I have bought, assembled and left behind in discarded lives, but I now have a custom-made desk which I hope will follow me for the next decade or so. It is solid and big enough for my two laptops (a fast and heavy one for my translation work and a much lighter and simpler one for my writing and travelling), my notebooks, dictionaries and a few statuettes that I have stolen from my husband. I love my ancient filing cabinet with a sliding door where I keep all my texts, diaries, newspaper clippings and research material — it is my treasure trove, the only object in the house off limits to everyone but me, my little 'jardin secret', as the French say.

It was in this special and cosy room, watching the changing light in the sky behind the Tower, that I finished my third novel, A Lucidez do Amor, and where I am currently working on my next project, which is set... in Paris, where else?