the three messages on the answer machine?
He knew perfectly well he would regret it, but he pressed the ‘Play’ button.
The first message, ‘Hi Fabien, it’s Gilles … OK, you’re not at home … Um … Would have been great to have a drink with you … Bachelor life’s a bit dull … No worries … Another time. Give me a ring when you get back. Cheers then! … Love to Sylvie!’
Second message: ‘Sylvie? … It’s me, Laure, Sylvie! … Where are you? … Are you in the loo? Well, anyway, you’re not there. Listen, since it’s Saturday evening and you said Fabien was away this weekend, I’d really like to go to a movie, so if you want to, it’s six o’clock now. See you later. Love you.’
Third message: ‘This is an urgent message for Monsieur Fabien Delorme. Could you please ring Dijon University Hospital? Your wife has been in a serious road accident. The number to contact us on is …’
*
He played the tape three times. Three times he heard Gilles snivelling about being on his own, Laure repeating her invitation and Dijon Hospital giving out their number, which he eventually wrote down on the corner of an envelope. He didn’t for one moment think it was a joke or a case of mistaken identity. He didn’t call straightaway. His first reaction was to light a cigarette and go and smoke it naked by the open window. He had no idea what on earth she could have been doing in a car in Dijon, but he was certain of one thing, Sylvie was dead – it was as certain as the wind now ruffling the hair of his balls. He flicked his cigarette butt down five floors onto the roof of a black Twingo.
‘Shit … I’m a widower now, a different person. What should I wear?’
Ever since the train had left the Gare de Lyon, a little Attila had been climbing all over his mother, pulling her hair and wiping his horrible chubby, sticky little hands on the knees of the other passengers. Fabien was not the least interested in the rapeseed-yellow, apple-green and boring blue countryside passing before his eyes. Sometimes in the tunnels he came face to face with his own reflection, like two rams ready to charge at each other.
They had never had children. To Fabien children were just receptacles that you constantly had to empty and fill. They clung to you for years, and as soon as they took themselves adults, they reproduced and ruined your holidays with their offspring. And Sylvie could barely stand her best friends’ children for more than an hour. If they ever had one of them over, as soon as they were gone, she cleaned and vacuumed to erase all traces of their presence, then sank onto the sofa, sighing, ‘That kid is such hard work.’
They were only interested in each other. Their love was the only thing that counted and they indulged it like an only child, until they smothered it. Today, Fabien realised how obnoxious their happiness had made them to other people. It was a real provocation. Little by little they had created a void around themselves. No one invited them out any more. They were kept at a distance, a bit like the bereaved. Everyone knows that excessive happiness is as off-putting as excessive misfortune.
It was at that point that Sylvie fell pregnant. Whilst waiting for her to come out of the clinic, he went to buy flowers. It was Valentine’s Day. The abortion went smoothly. It was as if she had had a tooth removed, nothing more. But something else must have grown in its place, something that didn’t like Fabien, because from that day on they didn’t make love any more. Well, that’s to say, only very rarely, after a drunken party or instead of playing Scrabble on one of those interminable February Sundays.
The annoying brat finally earned himself a smack on the bottom, whereupon he let out such a high-pitched wailing that the poor woman was obliged to drag him into the corridor by his arm. Not easy to raise a child on your own. It was obvious to Fabien that she was a single mother. He could always spot them. The way they and their child behaved like an old married couple, that mania for apologising for everything, and the way they let themselves go. Lank hair, no make-up, leggings bagging at the knee. The beautifying effect of motherhood? Hardly! It was no surprise that they found themselves dumped. Although the lot of their nonexistent partners wasn’t any more enviable – washing their socks in the basin, handing over the child support, eating out of tins. This was the liberated generation …
Three minutes’ stop at Dijon station. That was probably the amount of time he would have devoted to the city had he not had to go to the hospital. The succession of picture postcards going past the taxi window did not resonate with him. Pictures for a Chabrol film: restaurants, lawyers’ offices, more restaurants. He agreed with the taxi driver that it was all the same, whether on the left or on the right. He always agreed with taxi drivers, barbers, butchers, whoever he happened to be speaking to, and that was probably how he had survived.
At reception they asked him to wait a moment and someone would come and get him. He sat down on one of the moulded red plastic chairs that lined the bilious green walls. If he were ill, what he would find most humiliating would be hanging around the corridors in pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers. He found that as repulsive as the leggings and trainers combination favoured by the young, or the intolerable shorts and baseball cap outfit of American tourists. ‘All this time ahead of us, we might as well be comfortable. The Adidas view of eternity.’ After much reflection he had opted for smart casual – tweed jacket over a cashmere jumper, grey trousers and polished oxblood brogues. The man who was coming towards him wore a crumpled poor-quality beige suit and did not look like a doctor.
‘Inspector Forlani.’
‘Gérard,’ added Fabien, reading the name from the man’s identity bracelet.
Forlani came out with a tangled explanation from which the word ‘sorry’ buzzed like a fly. It must be terrible to do a job that made you say ‘sorry’ so many times. He would certainly not last long in the police. Fabien wanted to ask him if he liked his work, but he told himself it wasn’t the time and, anyway, the policeman wasn’t giving him the chance.
‘If you wouldn’t mind following me to the morgue. I’m so sorry …’
The inspector walked the way he talked, in hurried little bursts, throwing anxious glances over his shoulder, as if he feared Fabien would try to escape. The brown paper case from a cream cake was stuck to his left heel. It reminded Fabien of one of those paper fishes from April Fool’s Day.
‘Monsieur Forlani?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’ve got a cake paper stuck to your left shoe.’
‘A what?’
‘A paper stuck to your shoe.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
Hopping on one foot, he removed the paper from the other shoe, looked around for a waste-paper basket, then crumpled the paper in his hand and put it in his pocket with a shrug of the shoulders.
They passed several canteen trolleys pushed by bored-looking West Indians. Fabien wondered what he would have for lunch; he was hungry. The morgue was right at the other end of the hospital, near the bins. Forlani turned back to Fabien and paused for a moment. ‘Here it is.’
He sounded so serious that Fabien couldn’t suppress the beginnings of a smile. The inspector was like a dwarf on tiptoes. As he pushed open the door, they had to stand aside to let two women pass, one young, the other a bit older, both very pale. The room was reminiscent of an office canteen – vast, with white tiles, glass and chrome. Forlani spoke to two men in short white coats. They glanced briefly at Fabien and pulled the handle of a sort of drawer. Sylvie slid out of the wall.
‘Is this your wife?’
‘Yes and no. It’s the first time I’ve seen her dead. I mean, the first time I’ve seen a dead body. It’s not at all like a living person.’
Forlani and the men in white coats exchanged looks of astonishement.
‘It’s very important, Monsieur Delorme. Do you recognise your wife?’
Of course he recognised Sylvie, but not the smile fixed on her face.
‘Yes,