be told, and Adèle felt restless and full of emotion.
It was decided that the scene would be shot a sixth time. But Adèle was no longer paying attention to the filming. She was thinking about her story. It was not a particularly long story but it had to be told in full in order to convey what was so extraordinary about this text message. Yes, she had to start from the beginning, one month earlier, 18 September. A month was not a long time, yet in that time hearts had opened, suitcases had shut, and tears had fallen where they were no longer expected. And as a drama played out for the sixth time in the other room, Adèle used these last moments of silence as a chance to remember.
In the dimly lit corridor, she replayed the events of the last month in her head, events that had changed her life in a small way, but which had changed the lives of others beyond measure.
Chanteloup (Deux-Sèvres)
After about ten rings there was finally an answer.
‘Hello?’ said a slightly shaky voice.
‘Hi Grandpa, it’s Adèle.’
‘Hello?’ repeated the old man.
‘Grandpa?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Adèle!’
‘Oh, hello, sweetheart. How are you?’
‘Oh, fine, and you?’
‘Oh, you know, I’m …’ he replied with unmistakable weariness. ‘Why are you calling?’
‘Well … Mum explained that she’s going travelling, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, in Peru, she told me.’
‘OK, good, well I just wanted you to know that you can call me if there are any problems. I can come and see you.’
‘Oh right.’
‘While she’s away, I mean, you can call me,’ Adèle kept on, a little disappointed by her grandfather’s lack of enthusiasm.
‘Okey doke, that’s good,’ he replied politely.
‘And you’ve got my number, Grandpa?’
‘Yes, your mother gave it to me. But Adèle, are you still living in London, dear?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry, it’s not that far. I can get the train to you, it wouldn’t take long,’ Adèle lied.
‘Oh yes, you just get the train to Poitiers and then the bus, don’t you?’
‘Exactly,’ said Adèle, who had no idea how to get there, having not visited him for almost ten years.
‘And how long would the journey be overall?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, half a day, maybe a little more,’ guessed Adèle. But she suspected it would take a lot longer than that. Her grandfather lived in a hamlet near Chanteloup, a minuscule village tucked away in the forest in Deux-Sèvres.
‘Jolly good. But there’s no need anyway. Right, lots of love, bye.’
‘Wait, Grandpa, do you still have the phone that Mum gave you?’
‘Oh, you know, mobile phones …’ said her grandfather, who considered cutting-edge technology to be a lot of old nonsense. But luckily for Adèle, he would tolerate phone conversations on the condition that they were kept very short and were limited to the bare essentials. And a rant about progress did not, for today at least, count as essential.
‘But you still have it, right?’ Adèle persisted.
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Good, well, keep it with you and call if you need anything.’
‘Oh, I don’t need anything. Right, goodbye, sweetheart.’ And with that he hung up.
No, of course he didn’t need anything. His heart hadn’t been right since a heart attack in 1995, he had a pacemaker in his chest, a knee that threatened to go at any moment, and a pair of lungs that had been thoroughly blackened by forty years of Gitanes … But he went about his life as he always had, ate like a horse, tended his garden, whistled as he did the dishes. And he still had enough fight in him to fire swear words at his doctors, who regularly predicted he had only a few months left in him. They had said the same for almost fifteen years. Well, that was the story according to Françoise, Adèle’s mother; Adèle herself had very little contact with him. And this was no cause for guilt, since he repeated incessantly, with the delicacy and restraint he was known for, that he just wanted to be ‘left the hell alone’.
Adèle put her mobile phone into the pocket of her combat trousers. 7.23 p.m. She had been standing there waiting in the middle of the street for at least a quarter of an hour. The September evening air was still warm, and Brick Lane was filled with the sound of drunken laughter coming from the overcrowded Swan pub. Adèle had never liked this part of town, even if her friends assured her that it was the coolest place in London. On rare sunny days, she appreciated its vibrant colours and found the odd gem in its unusual shops. But on grey days, her senses were overloaded with the smells of curry spices, the rubbish everywhere, the waiters hawking outside the Indian restaurants and the dark, dirty buildings. And yet over the next month, she was going to have to spend many long days and even some nights in this area. For here, on a road with a bilingual English and Bengali street sign, was the one and only filming location: a three-storey house built of stone as grey as the English sky. The house was barely noticeable amongst the old warehouses lining the gloomy little street whose most regular visitors were junkies and groups of drunken girls. Adèle was standing by the front door. Inside, things were already getting started. 7.27 p.m. Her working day was just beginning, and it had not got off to a good start.
She pulled the staff memo from her pocket and read it over for the third time. The leading actor was expected in make-up at 7.30. Her name – Adèle Montsouris – was written next to his. It was funny to see their two names side by side, as they were at opposite ends of the television-industry food chain. He was a star of BBC period dramas with a salary of several hundred thousand pounds, and she was right at the bottom, twenty-two years old and a runner, unpaid of course; she was doing it ‘for the experience’. She fetched teas and coffees, booked taxis and babysat actors of all ages. She was the first to arrive on set and the last to leave. This was all the ‘experience’ Adèle had managed to accumulate over the course of three films, and without being paid a penny for her trouble. The fact that her name was next to his meant that if he was late, the first, second, second-second and third assistant directors were entitled to hold her responsible – and people loved to shout at each other on film sets. So she in turn would have to shout at the taxi driver, find a plan B, warn the make-up artist and all the rest of it. The third day of shooting had barely begun and Adèle could already feel her muscles tensing in anticipation of this new disaster. Since the trials of the preceding days were also weighing on her mind, Adèle soon forgot the distant grandfather she had just spoken to.
But he had not forgotten her. Her phone call had turned everything, everything upside down.
George Nicoleau stayed by the phone in the corridor for some time, utterly perplexed.
‘Dammit,’ he said to himself aloud. ‘Dammit, dammit, and dammit again. Damn!’
Not that he didn’t appreciate that Adèle had got in touch – no indeed, her call had boosted him in some way, and he had been feeling a little deflated that evening. His granddaughter had not come to visit him since her parents’ divorce, which must have been, what, almost ten years ago. She had sent him a card every year wishing him a happy new year, and there had been a few postcards when she first moved to London. There they all were, in fact, tacked to the faded wallpaper, next to the 2008 Postal Services calendar, above