years apart. When Claire moved in with François, she used to see them often, playing with the concierge’s little girl on the pavement out in front. They’re big now, no more scooters and marbles until they have children of their own. She never hears them intervene when their father raises his hand against their mother. Like all people this kind of thing doesn’t happen to, Claire is sure, (or so she thinks every time she meets someone from that family in the elevator) that she never would have put up with what the woman downstairs endures. If only for her two daughters’ sake, she’d have found the courage to leave, to pack her bags, whatever it cost, she’d have protected them from a violent father. Christophe had never laid a finger on Claire, nor on his daughters.
He left her just before the older girl’s sixth birthday. Claire had loved him unreservedly and obstinately for ten years. He’d come into her life when she was twenty-two, one New Year’s Eve at a friend’s house. She’d felt his eyes on her, trying to locate her wherever she was in the room, and then his large figure had kept appearing within a few feet from her, following her around from group to group. A mild form of stalking, which he hadn’t tried to conceal. He wanted her. It attracted Claire. She waited. That evening he was wearing a black sweater and three-day stubble, which suited him. She was young, still unsurprised that life revolved around her, pursuing her and offering her the choicest gifts. After spending a few nights with him, she’d begged him to shave. Claire’s face was burning, her fine skin irritated and painful. He was her first serious boyfriend. She had met Christophe the same year her mother had marched her off to a dietician—and it had worked. Claire had lost weight, had to buy new clothes, and had become attractive again. She managed to stay slim for two years, but after the birth of the older girl, Mathilde, she’d put on ten pounds and never succeeeded in losing them. It was distressing, but it hadn’t dragged her down into the depths of depression, as it would have done before she had given birth. Something had happened to her with motherhood, it had given her calm and confidence. The presence of this baby in her life had transformed the way she looked at things.
Before Mathilde, there had been holidays abroad: Egypt, New York, Ireland, Sweden, friends, dinner parties, evenings at the cinema, their first apartment, family parties, and plenty of long mornings in bed. Then there’d been the enchantment of declaring her pregnancy, decisions to make together, the nursery to be furnished, the first scan, thinking of a name. Her parents had completely changed their attitude when she’d told them the news. Claire had a sister three years younger, who had always been her mother’s favorite. Claire had been the child who was a bit too fat, a bit too placid, never managing to engage her parents’ attention. When they divorced, she had been twelve years old, and once more, her mother had devoted herself to her little sister, everything revolved around her. Claire didn’t engage in any pranks, she didn’t worry her mother. And she wasn’t as pretty. She couldn’t do anything without attracting blame. Nobody around her had taken the trouble to notice that she had been deeply upset by the divorce. It’s true that she hadn’t done anything outrageous to alert anyone. She had just started putting on a few pounds, slowly, and become more withdrawn. In her childhood bedroom, for years she had secretly pinned the holiday postcards sent by her mother next to the ones from her father, so that the blue hills of the Vosges were up against the mountains of Peru, the Mediterranean jostled the Pacific. With a little Scotch tape to stick them together. That was back when the children of divorced parents used to have to explain to their schoolfriends what it was like to have two homes, in the days when that was still unusual. Her sister Aline hadn’t needed a year’s mourning in order to start boasting in the playground of two piles of Christmas and birthday presents and all the special permissions to be absent or to extract more pocket money through parental guilt or bargaining: “Mummy said yes,” or “Daddy promised me.” Claire often wished she could strangle her sister. But once she was pregnant with Mathilde, everything changed. Both parents got into the habit of calling her up all the time, and she had to schedule their visits so that they didn’t coincide too often. The day of the birth, they had both been with her in her hospital room, without their new partners, and she had seen the joy on their faces: shared emotion, the first grandchild. And it had lasted until the birth of the second daughter, Elisabeth. Then, wouldn’t you know, Aline had become pregnant just afterward, from some one-night stand, not that that made the coming child less welcome. On the contrary, as usual, she had managed to spoil everything, demanding maximum attention. One day, Aline had turned up at her mother’s house, declaring firmly that she couldn’t go through with it, she wanted an abortion at six months. Next day she turned up at her father’s, saying she would have the baby but give it up for adoption, she couldn’t take care of a child on her own. A week later, heavily pregnant, she was snivelling in her mother’s kitchen, drinking her fifth beer and chain smoking, claiming that she was sure the baby would be stillborn, and of course she would never get over it. Poor little dead baby, she spent the whole evening torturing her mother. And it worked. She got all their attention. The parents started telephoning each other every day, telling each other what they’d had to endure from her, and making frantic efforts to rescue their daughter from the brink of madness. Aline had always done whatever she liked, and her tactics were spectacularly successful. She had given birth to her son. It would be a son, of course. For three months, she’d gone into ecstasies over the bliss of motherhood, then her figure had come back, she’d put on a dress, left the baby with her mother, and continued her life as before: plenty of affairs, too much alcohol, and hefty overdrafts.
Mathilde was just five then, the age when children stop being little angels and become little people, they’re not quite so cute, adults find them less entrancing. Her grandmother went on looking after her with pleasure, but her real pride and joy was Thibaut, the first male child. The adorable, extraordinary, reckless, willful, insufferable Thibaut. Claire was already in therapy at that stage: she was getting the feeling that at last she could take control of her life and would be capable of going forward alone, without her parents’ support. She had everything she wanted. A husband, two daughters, a very nice apartment. She’d spent ages studying interior design magazines, so that within the limits of their budget, their apartment would look stylish. So that Christophe would be proud to invite his colleagues back, and be happy himself to return home in the evenings. She had thought how grateful she was for what life had given her in the nine years with him, every time she found herself chatting to a friend whose husband was unfaithful, or having problems with his career, or being difficult to live with. She had thought how grateful she was, every time she met former schoolfriends who still had no children and thought they could fill their lives with something else. As if you could do without that kind of love and not miss out on what life was all about. In return, she tried her best to take care of everything properly, writing herself long to-do lists that she never completely dealt with. She saw to all the family medical appointments, sorted out clothes for the different seasons, organized their holidays, supervised the children’s homework, thought of interesting activities for them, had plates that matched the tablecloth, found a good dentist, arranged fun birthday parties, paid the bills, drove the children to the swimming pool, bought new shirts for her husband before the old ones wore out, recruited a cleaning woman, located the best car insurance. She had never imagined that Christophe would underestimate the happiness they enjoyed, and his good fortune in having a wife like her at home. A wife who would help his children grow up, who wasn’t a big spender, who was always cheerful and took care of everything without complaint.
One Friday evening, he had called at eight o’clock to warn her he had to work over the whole weekend and wouldn’t be home. Mathilde was watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on television and the little one was in the bath surrounded by Barbie dolls. A lump had suddenly formed in Claire’s throat. The previous times, no doubts had occurred to her, but a list had been building up, in her reason’s blind spot, of all the occasions recently when he had gotten home at two in the morning, of the out-of-town conferences, and of the weekend meetings. And that evening, despite her unwillingness to understand, the pieces had come together. There’d been a lot of absences recently. He didn’t call home all weekend and on the Monday night when he got in, he wasn’t his usual self. Claire had started talking, an unconscious mechanism. Her mouth opened and words spilled out endlessly, because she sensed that as soon as she paused, he’d say what he had to say. It had worked before, she knew that without admitting it to herself. She just had to play for time, for him to give up trying, and say nothing. But that