Читать книгу The Front Seat Passenger: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir - Pascal Garnier - Страница 6

‘Love stories usually end in tears …’

An index finger with a bitten nail abruptly cut Rita Mitsouko off. The sudden return to silence hurt. Ten fingers began to tap the steering wheel, making a dull, monotonous, rhythmic sound. Like rain. The dashboard dials glowed fluorescent green. There was no other light for miles around. No stars. Just a very faint gleam, over there, behind the hills, revealing a faraway town. The right hand moved from the steering wheel, caressing the gear lever, as one might the head of a cat, or the handle of a gun. It was a good car, powerful, reliable, grey. Eleven thirty, they shouldn’t be long now. Staring at the second hand made it seem as if it had stopped. But no, it was continuing its relentless passage, like a donkey turning the grindstone of a mill.

Then suddenly coming over the hill, the beam of headlights, night paling, receding … The right hand grasped the lever and changed up a gear. The left hand gripped the steering wheel. The right headlamp of the car hurtling over the hill was skewed towards the verge. The grey car, all its lights off, accelerated forward like a bagatelle ball. It was definitely them: right time, same wonky headlight.

In the forest a fox had just ripped open a rabbit. It pricked up its ears when it heard the squealing of tyres on tarmac and the clang of metal in the ravine. But that only lasted a few seconds. Then silence descended again. With one bite, the fox disembowelled the rabbit and plunged its muzzle into the steaming innards. All around it, thousands of animals, large and small, were eating or climbing on top of each other for the sole purpose of perpetuating their species.

‘You eat your vegetables with your meat?’

‘Uh … yes.’

‘When you were little, you used to do the same as me: first the meat, then the vegetables … People change.’

His father had a habit of punctuating his speech with little platitudes like ‘People change … When you got to go, you got to go … That’s life … That’s the way it goes.’ He made them sound like wise maxims. People change … It was true that the old man had taken it hard when he heard that Charlotte had died, even though he hadn’t seen her for thirty-five years. He seemed to shrink in on himself, collapsing as if someone had just whisked a stool out from under him. He appeared hollowed out. Had you tapped him on the back he would have uttered a sound like owls in a dead tree. Fabien had noticed it last week on the phone, a sort of strange echo in his father’s voice, like a far-off appeal.

‘There’s a car-boot sale at Ferranville next Sunday – do you want to give me a hand? To get rid of some stuff …’ And then just before hanging up: ‘Charlotte’s dead.’

From the moment she had left them when Fabien was five, she was always referred to as Charlotte, never ‘Maman’. Fabien had never heard his father say a bad word about her, nor a good word; he simply didn’t mention her. Like Dreyfus, he had exiled her to a place in his memory as distant as Devil’s Island.

His nose practically touching the end of his fork as he bent over his plate, the old man was making little heaps of carrots, potatoes and green beans, neat and tidy the way they grew in his vegetable patch.

‘It went quite well today. How much did you make?’

‘Not sure … Five hundred francs, six hundred maybe. It was really just to make space.’

‘I didn’t realise you had kept all that stuff up there.’

‘All what stuff?’

‘Charlotte’s things.’

His father shrugged, rose and went to scrape his barely touched plate into the compost bin. Fabien had the impression that it was so that he could turn away and wipe a tear. He bit his lip. He shouldn’t have mentioned Charlotte, but he’d been here for three days now and he was still waiting for his father to say something about her. He couldn’t help suspecting that for the last thirty years the old man had secretly been hoping that one fine day Charlotte would reappear to collect her possessions. Her possessions … Ghosts didn’t have possessions; they didn’t have lizard-skin shoes or red handbags. A young girl had bought the shoes and bag that morning at the sale. Seventy francs altogether. His father hadn’t tried to push the price up. His hand hadn’t trembled as he handed over the thirty francs’ change. But he had gazed after the girl until long after she had disappeared into the crowd.

‘What time’s your train?’

‘Six something.’

‘We’ve got plenty of time. I’m going to take it easy for a bit. My back hurts. Leave all that, I’ll do the washing up this evening.’

‘No, no, I don’t mind doing it. You go and rest.’

It doesn’t take long to do the washing up for two. A pity – he wouldn’t have minded doing the washing up until it was time to leave. He didn’t like the house and the house had never liked him. His father had bought it and moved in after his retirement. Fabien always felt as if he were in a waiting room. He never knew where to put himself. Everything was square, angular, clean and functional. For want of anywhere better he sat back down in the chair he’d had lunch in. His father was snoozing on one of the vile armchairs that immediately made you think of hospitals and death. His glasses were pushed up on his forehead, his book, How to Survive Tragedy, open on his stomach. He had only ever read books like that, self-help books about survival: surviving the war, the cold, the heat, pollution, epidemics, atomic radiation. He read them with the zeal that others devoted to imagining life after death. What tragedy had he survived? Charlotte? No, it was something before that. Charlotte had only been confirmation of the dangers of living. In this hostile world, you could only ever count on yourself. When Fabien had lived with him it was like living underwater. Each time he left him, he felt stifled, experienced the need to breathe as after an attack of apnoea. When his father died, Fabien would inherit from him a mountain of silence.

Once, in order to get him to talk, he’d taken his father to a restaurant. His father hated restaurants, and cafés, and hotels, and anywhere there were other people. Fabien had hoped to talk to him man to man, like friends. He was a little old to believe in miracles, but he had decided to force his father to tell him a little bit, anything at all, about his youth, about Fabien’s youth, before Charlotte, after Charlotte. Had he had mistresses? Did he still have them? Just something to give Fabien a clue. To encourage him, Fabien had opened up about the more intimate details of his own life, and to give himself some Dutch courage had swallowed a few large glasses of white wine. He was comprehensively drunk before the meal was half finished, and was starting to talk nonsense, whilst his father had said no more than ‘Eat up, it will get cold.’

As he paid the bill, and his father carefully folded his napkin, Fabien had felt horribly humiliated. Instead of encouraging his father to confide in him, he had spilt his own guts in the most obscene way. When he got home he was desperate to take a shower.

That had been a good fifteen years ago. Today it was different. He knew that his father would never talk to him for the very good reason that he had nothing to say, and that was just fine. Fabien was the child of two phantoms, with the absence of one and the silence of the other providing his only experience of family. They had each carved out their own isolated little existence, that was all.

For over thirty years, Charlotte had lain against his father’s right buttock between his social security card and his identity card in the name of ‘Fernand Delorme’ (the desiccated photo showed a young dark-haired woman in short white socks and sandals, smiling like mad against the backdrop of a forest path), and there had never been any room for him between those two.

‘For the love of God! How can you live with the ticking of that grandfather clock?’

It was his father’s pride and joy, a Comtoise. An upright coffin. Exactly the right size for Charlotte.

‘Papa, it’s time to go.’

‘What? … Oh yes, right. When you got to go, you got to go.’

The bright-yellow Renault 4 bought second-hand by his father from the post office (such a bargain!) gave two or three alarming splutters before coming to a halt outside the station.

‘We’re early. You’ve a good quarter of an hour still.’

‘Don’t wait, Papa, you go home.’

‘It’s strange that you can’t drive. You’d be more independent.’

‘What would I do that I don’t do now?’

‘Whatever you like. Well now, give my love to Sylvie and don’t forget the lilac. Tell her to put it straight into water as soon as you get there.’

‘I will, Papa. Goodbye. I’ll ring you next week.’

‘Speak to you then.’

*

Fabien was not the only one on the platform bearing lilac. The damp newspaper wrapped round the stems was slowly disintegrating between his fingers.

He had never noticed that his father had such long hairs growing out of his ears. That was the only thing he retained from three days spent in his company.

It’s always a little disappointing when you walk into an empty house expecting someone to be there, but actually, Sylvie’s absence suited him. He would have had to talk to her, to tell her about his trip, and he had absolutely nothing to say either to Sylvie or anyone else. He couldn’t even be bothered to listen to the messages on the answer machine. He was coming back from a world of silence, the great paternal depths, and he needed to decompress. Sylvie must have gone to the cinema with Laure. She always did that when he wasn’t there. Fabien didn’t like going to the cinema, especially not in the evening.

She must have left in a hurry because there was no note on the kitchen table. Sylvie was often late; it reassured her to know that someone was waiting for her. The lilac had gone a bit limp, the newspaper now little more than grey mush. He looked around for the blue vase but couldn’t find it. He never knew where Sylvie kept things. Things were not his domain. It was she who made them appear and disappear at will. He couldn’t do that; he was too clumsy, he broke everything. When he was alone in the house, he spent ages playing hunt the thimble, or rather the tin-opener, or the socks or the extension lead. Turning away to avoid the smell, he thrust the lilac into the bin.

In the fridge he found four eggs, a slightly green slice of ham and three beers. He did not investigate any further for fear of encountering a wizened old lettuce or a carrot gone soft in the bottom of the vegetable drawer. He just had a beer. For the first two years of their life together the fridge had overflowed with calf’s liver, entrecôtes, spare ribs, poultry, fish, fresh vegetables, cream, desserts, and the cellar had always been full of Sancerre, burgundy and champagne. Half their time was spent in bed, the other half at table. They contemplated their rolls of fat with the complacent delight of a pregnant woman in front of the bathroom mirror. They were insatiable to the point of excess.

Then one day she had decided that they were too happy, that it could not last, that it wasn’t normal. So they had let time elapse between them, slow but inexorable, like the advancing desert. They didn’t do anything or say anything about it. They didn’t have children or get a dog or a cat. They did nothing and their relationship withered.

The beer tasted of metal, like his hands, gripping the balcony railing, and the stars up there in the sky, and the whole city spread out at his feet. Metal.

‘How many of us are there, looking out of our windows, holding a can of beer, asking ourselves if we could still make something of ourselves? What would that something be? Fame? Fortune? Love? All that remains from childhood is an indefinable vertigo, a slight regret.’

The other day, on a café terrace, someone behind him had said, ‘I wonder if I could still fall in love?’ It had been a man his own age. On the pavement, girls went past, light as cigarettes, haloed by the June sun, and inaccessible.

A few years ago, the sirocco had blown through Paris. The cars were covered with a fine layer of pink sand. Fabien had been in the same spot on his balcony. He had wished that a metre of it would fall, like the snow when he was little. But nothing lasted here; everything turned to mud. Doubtless his wishes weren’t strong enough.

He didn’t understand television ads any more. He couldn’t make out what they were trying to sell him. A drink? A car? A cleaning product? He felt as if there was a whole world of fit guys running through the waves in their Speedos, gorgeous pneumatic girls dripping soap, adorable children smeared with jam, and dogs bouncing around as the family drank their breakfast Nesquik. A world that was nearby but inaccessible to him. The same went for the news (there still just seemed to be good and bad), and for games where he never knew who was supposed to be doing what. And for cop shows where the cop seemed mainly to focus on rear-ending all the cars in front of him. But that didn’t stop him thinking that television was man’s best friend, far ahead of dogs, horses and even Sylvie.

He wondered if he was hungry. ‘Maybe,’ he thought. But the effort of managing frying pan, butter and eggs seemed too great. Instead he went and brushed his teeth to put an end to thoughts of eating. He wouldn’t go and visit his father again for a long time. Each visit crushed him. When he was young he never had time to brush his teeth at night. He fell asleep wherever he happened to be and in the morning picked up where he had left off. Now his days were divided into neat slices interspersed with the mechanics of living. He lay on his bed, the light off, Macha Béranger’s voice stealing into his ear like a hermit crab. He was nothing more than a toothpaste-flavoured empty mouth on the pillow. A little sweet-smelling corpse. Why couldn’t he fall asleep? Was he waiting for a key in the lock, or was it the annoying winking of 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, yes, it’s her.’

‘Right. Do you know what her final wishes were?’

‘Her final wishes?’

‘Yes, whether she wanted to be buried or cremated?’

‘I’ve no idea … I imagine like everyone she didn’t want to die at all.’

‘OK, we’ll sort that out later then. Don’t worry, we’ll look after everything.’

‘I’m not worried. I trust you. It’s my first time; I don’t know what to do.’

‘We understand, Monsieur Delorme, we understand. If you’d like to follow me, I have some questions to ask you.’

They went back the way they’d come, still at the jerky pace of the inspector. Fabien felt as if he were watching a film in reverse. Had they not stopped by the coffee machine, he could have gone back in time to before his visit to his father, and found Sylvie fresh and elegant. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Since the previous evening, nothing much surprised him.

‘Sugar?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘So, Monsieur Delorme, you weren’t aware your wife was in the area?’

‘No, she didn’t tell me she was coming here. I thought she would be at home.’

‘In Paris, 28 Rue Lamarck?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Monsieur Delorme, where were you this weekend?’

‘I was visiting my father in Ferranville, in Normandy. I helped him clear out his attic. There was a car-boot sale.’

‘You went on Friday and came back on Sunday evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘You had no idea your wife had come to Dijon?’

‘No, we don’t know anyone here. At least, I don’t.’

Forlani was taking notes in a brand-new 12.50-franc notebook, the price sticker still on it. The cap on his biro was chewed and the stem bent outwards so that he could bounce it on the edge of the table as he was thinking. What was it he was not saying?

‘Monsieur Delorme, do you know if your wife was having an affair?’

‘An affair?’

‘Whether she had a lover?’

‘A lover? What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Your wife wasn’t alone in the car.’

‘Ah.’

‘She was with a man who also died in the accident.’

‘But just because he was in the car with her doesn’t necessarily mean …’

‘Of course not, Monsieur Delorme, but the evening before they went to an inn where they were well known because they’d been there several times. Le Petit Chez-Soi. Have you heard of it?’

‘Le Petit Chez-Soi? No. That’s a horrible name, don’t you think?’

Clearly Forlani had no opinion about the name. He simply made a face as he waved his biro like a rattle.

‘I bet they have lamps made from wine bottles with tartan lampshades.’

‘I couldn’t say, Monsieur Delorme. Perhaps, perhaps they do … Tell me, do you have a car?’

‘No, I don’t drive.’

‘Do you mean that you don’t have a driving licence?’

‘That’s right. I hate cars. With good reason now, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, indeed … In that case I won’t detain you much longer.’

‘Before I go, I’d like to know a bit more about how the accident happened.’

‘Of course. Well, it was on Saturday evening, about eleven thirty, dry, straight road, at the bottom of a hill. The car must have been going quite fast. It crashed into the security barrier on the right and fell into a ravine. Your wife and the man who was driving were coming back from a restaurant in Dijon, but they hadn’t drunk much. Perhaps the driver was taken ill, or perhaps he had to swerve to avoid an oncoming vehicle? There were tyre tracks from another car. They’re being investigated.’

‘What was he called, my wife’s … lover?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Perhaps I know him; affairs often develop between friends. And also, we’re sort of related now.’

‘I can’t tell you, Monsieur Delorme. The man is also married.’

‘To one of the women we passed as we went into the morgue?’

‘Well … yes. You should go home now, Monsieur Delorme. We’ll keep you informed.’

‘You’re right … Oh, sorry, I’m so clumsy!’ He had just spilt the remains of his coffee in the inspector’s lap. The inspector rushed off to the toilets, leaving his brand-new notebook and chewed pen behind on the low table.

His wife’s lover was called Martial Arnoult and his wife was Martine, residing at number 45 Rue Charlot, in the third arrondissement in Paris.

Martine Arnoult, 45 Rue Charlot. Paris, 3rd arrdt. The first thing he did when he got home was to note the name and address on the white board in the kitchen underneath brown shoe polish, batteries (4), pay electricity bill. He didn’t really know what he would do with it. Probably nothing. He had just collected the information like picking up a stone on a beach. The kind of thing you chucked in the bin when you got back from holiday. Then he had slept straight through for fifteen or sixteen hours.

But tomorrow wasn’t another day. Sylvie was still dead. In the street and in the supermarket, everyone continued with their lives as if nothing had happened. A warm summer was forecast, the cashier’s sister had just had a little girl. Someone dropped a bottle of oil.

Fabien bought the brown polish, the batteries, eggs and some strong chorizo. He would do the cheque for the electricity as soon as he got home. Hello, goodbye, everything was incredibly normal. He was torn between the desire to shout out, ‘Hey! Don’t you know? Sylvie is dead; I’m a widower!’ and the bitter pleasure of being in possession of a secret: ‘I know something that you don’t and I’m not going to tell you what it is.’

In the flat, Sylvie’s presence could still be felt everywhere. It was not just because of the familiar objects dotted about, but it also felt as if she had left behind a little part of herself in every molecule of air she had breathed. It was like watching invisible hands on the keyboard of a pianola. Fabien fried himself two eggs, with onions, tomato and chorizo. That was what he always cooked when he ate on his own. Sylvie couldn’t bear strong chorizo. He loved it and could happily have eaten it for lunch and dinner every day for the rest of his life. Now his delight in it was ruined.

He went over in his head all the household tasks and other duties that he had never undertaken and quickly felt overwhelmed. He poured a large Scotch to make himself feel better. But it wasn’t just the tasks. It was the loss of all their little routines – evenings in front of the telly, going to the market on Saturday morning, family birthdays, trips to the museum. In short, everything he had detested up until the day before yesterday. This revelation had a strange effect on him; he was even going to miss their petty little squabbles. He helped himself to another glass, fuller than the first one. He hadn’t thought of what he would miss. Until now he had considered widowhood a sort of honorary bonus, like a rosette to pin on his lapel. Of course, it had been a long time since they had been in love, but he hadn’t hated Sylvie; there had been a sort of tender complicity between them.

The alcohol was making him tearful. Memories of the happy times they had spent together kept surfacing like soap bubbles. Gradually self-pity gave way to anger.

‘At a stroke you’ve made me a widower and a cuckold. Nice one. Bravo! Do you know that down there in the street no one cares you’re dead? Yes! A widower and a cuckold! I don’t like that word. It’s not right for me. It’s a silly word like poo and wee-wee. But people like it. It’s a comic word, probably because it sounds rude. And at Le Petit Chez-Soi with a guy called Martial! Classy! What got into you, for God’s sake? Of course, now you’re not obliged to answer me. The dead get all the rights, especially the right to remain silent, like my father, like Charlotte … I was going to say you’d sent word round. That’s funny, since none of you actually speak. But I can make any jokes I like! I’m the one who’s been wronged; I have the choice of weapons! I’m free, you hear? FREE! I can stuff my face, vomit on the carpet, belch, fart, wank, spray come all over your ridiculous lace curtains! That’s right, keep saying nothing, but I can ruin your eternal peace by saying anything and everything. I can fill your goddamned nothingness with a torrent of words from morning to night! Oh, fuck it! Do what you like with your death. What do I care? … You’re free, I’m free, we’re all free …’

It was darkest night when he awoke face down on the carpet. It was so thick it was as if the pile had grown. He rolled onto his side. The bedroom light was on. For a fraction of a second he imagined Sylvie reading in bed, her cheek resting in the palm of her hand, her glasses perched on her nose. The image disappeared as he retched. He staggered to the bathroom. Eggs, chorizo and whisky swirled down the basin plughole. Fabien leant back against the wall and let himself slide to the floor. His hand landed on a book. It was a book on gardens that Sylvie had been reading recently, Secret Gardens by Rosemary Verey. He opened it randomly at page 8: ‘Since his fall from grace, man has not stopped creating gardens, secret places to gather and exchange confidences and pledges, places of reminiscence. Although over the centuries the secret garden has taken on a different aspect, it still symbolises man’s inner secrets.’

The ringing of the telephone acted on him like an electric shock. He let it go on for a long time, but obviously the person on the other end was not going to give up. Fabien propelled himself towards the phone, banging his leg on the bedside table, and collapsed onto the bed.

‘Hello?’

‘Fabien? It’s Gilles. Are you OK?’

‘Yes, yes … I was asleep. How are you?’

‘Me? I’m fine, it’s you I’m worried about.’

‘I just banged my shin. It’s nothing.’

‘Fabien, I …don’t know what to say …Sylvie …’

‘What about Sylvie? She’s not here. She must have gone to the cinema with Laure.’

‘What are you saying? Stop pissing about. Your father rang me. He’s really concerned. Your phone call shook him up.’

‘My phone call?’

‘Yes, your phone call. Don’t you remember? You were dead drunk but he understood everything. I feel terrible for you … Do you want me to come round?’

‘What for?’

‘To be with you! I’m your friend.’

‘Thanks … but not now. Tomorrow morning if you want. I’m going to sleep, for a long time.’

‘OK, mate. You’re sure you won’t do anything stupid?’

‘Why would I do anything stupid?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘I’m just going to sleep. Come at about nine o’clock.’

‘OK, see you then. I’m really sorry. I’m here for you.’

‘Thanks, Gilles. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

So that was it. Once again he had blurted everything out to his father. But sooner or later, everyone would have to know. He would have preferred it to be later. The real penance was about to begin. He was going to have to tell the story ten times over, hundreds of times over, thank people, shake people’s moist hands, kiss their flaccid, damp cheeks, see distant provincial cousins. It all seemed beyond him. He told himself coffee would do him good. As he crossed the apartment he took in the damage wreaked by his one and only fit of jealousy: drawers emptied, furniture overturned, ashtrays spilt, and the contents of the wardrobe strewn about and soiled. Devastation as shameful as it was derisory. Who was going to clean up that bloody mess? Gilles? Laure? The best strategy would be to hide behind his new-found status as a betrayed widower floored by grief and to get everyone else to look after him. That wasn’t the noblest of stances but at least it had the merit of giving him time to work out what to do next.

Somewhat reassured, he fell asleep on the sitting-room sofa, wrapped up in the large blue shawl he’d given Sylvie for her fortieth birthday. Just as his eyes were closing, the thought occurred to him that she had never worn it.

Laure and Gilles didn’t know that from the bathroom you could hear everything that was said in the kitchen.

Laure: ‘He can’t stay on his own. He’s never been able to manage on his own.’

Gilles: ‘The lucky bastard! He’s never had to worry about being on his own before … I would ask him to come and live with me at the house. Since Fanchon left, there’s plenty of room. I only have the kid every other weekend. And actually it would suit me to have someone help me with the rent … But will he want that? Hey, did you know about Sylvie?’

Laure: ‘No, she never mentioned anyone. I knew their relationship wasn’t great any more, but there was never any question of a lover. In fact she disapproved of that kind of thing. I often used to tell her to have an affair, to give her confidence, nothing serious, but it didn’t seem to appeal to her. You think you know people, then it turns out …’

Gilles: ‘Fanchon and me, we told each other everything. But at the end of the day, the result was the same, except Fanchon isn’t dead.’

Laure: ‘Well, you know what I think about marriage. Here’s to being single! One boyfriend after another and no more than one night under the same roof.’

Gilles: ‘Yeah, right. You just can’t hold on to any of them, that’s all. You’d like nothing better than evenings in, drying nappies and cuddling up on the sofa. I don’t know anyone keener to settle down than you.’

Laure: ‘Me?’

Gilles: ‘Yes, you. But to avoid being disappointed, to preserve your ideal of married life, you only let yourself fall for passing Californians.’

Laure: ‘You’re talking crap, Gilles. Anyway, Helmut isn’t Californian.’

Gilles: ‘He is just passing through though.’

It was funny to hear them discussing him and chatting on the other side of the wall. Fabien felt as if he didn’t exist any more, as if Sylvie’s disappearance had caused him to disappear as well. Perhaps death was contagious. Or he was morphing into Peter Brady, from H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, Sylvie’s favourite hero. When they met she had told him that when she was little she had never missed an episode of that serial. That should have put him on his guard. It was hard to compete with someone like that. She had some strange ideas, like her great regret that she had never managed to become an anaesthetist. He wondered if in fact she had succeeded, at least with him. It was odd, he had expected to see some mark on his face, a scar from Sylvie’s death, but there was nothing, not one new wrinkle, not the slightest redness in the middle of his forehead and yet, God knows, the light from the fluorescent strip over the basin was unforgiving. All that remained of Sylvie was things: pots of cream, lipsticks, mascara, a toothbrush, tweezers, nail files, brushes … What was he going to do with all that detritus? Nothing. He was going to do nothing with it. He wasn’t going to give them to the poor, or burn them; he wasn’t going to touch any of it. He could just disappear, close the door and go and take up residence somewhere else. They weren’t quite right, those two who were cleaning and sweeping in the kitchen: it wasn’t that he was incapable of living on his own, it was just that he could only contemplate solitude if someone else was with him.

He remembered Gilles and Fanchon’s apartment as a cosy, comfortable jumble of furniture lovingly selected from junk shops, souvenirs of exotic trips, rugs, atmospheric lamps, etc. Now all that remained were pale rectangular patches on the yellowing walls, a scant few pieces of furniture – a round table, three chairs, a telly and a sagging sofa on which Gilles sat cross-legged, a dressing gown round his shoulders. He was smoking weed and a thick cloud of smoke floated above his head. He looked as though he had been abandoned in the middle of an ice field with various toys – a giraffe, a big red lorry, wooden blocks, little dismembered figures, and some other more or less identifiable items.

‘The bailiffs or a burglary?’

‘Fanchon. Take a seat.’

Fabien sat down amidst the ruins of a devastated multicoloured Lego town.

‘It’s the lack of curtains that makes it look empty. Curtains are important in a room. But I kept the fridge, the cooker and the TV. How do you feel?’

‘I feel nothing. As if I’m on automatic pilot. I suppose that’s normal at the beginning. I hardly noticed this week go by; I just slept.’

‘You were right to come here. It’s not good to stay there all by yourself. Make yourself at home. Léo is a cool kid, you’ll see. I told him you were going to come and live with us. He was really pleased. He gets bored at his mum’s. Try some, it’s Colombian. It’s been years since I smoked anything this good. It’s better than Valium.’

The weed filled his mouth with a powerful peppery taste. Coils of smoke twirled in a ray of sunlight.

‘How did it go?’

‘What?’

‘The funeral.’

‘All right. Good weather. Laure and your father-in-law squabbled a bit; they both wanted to take charge of things. You know what they’re like.’

‘No one said anything? I mean about me not being there …’

‘Whisperings here and there. Nothing too bad. Given the circumstances, most people understood. Anyway, they couldn’t say anything in front of your father.’

‘How was he?’

‘Monolithic. He told me to look after you and that he was sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘I don’t know … Anyway, in the meantime you can sleep in Léo’s room. I’ve put his bed in my room. It will be fine like that for the weekend, and as you can see, there’s plenty of space for him to play in here. Guess what? Yesterday she came to take the TV away! Can you believe it? She earns twenty thousand francs a month and she wanted to take the telly from me! I was gutted. I haven’t even got enough to pay the rent. She’s crazy.’