Chapter 38 #2
Mathilde froze. This refusal to accept reality triggered a wave of fury and revulsion.
She had the feeling that when Nora had called her for help she was just trying to offload a problem she couldn’t deal with on her own.
She was using her as a crutch. Dragging her into the abyss of guilt.
Rage pounded her stomach more violently than if she’d been kicked in the abdomen.
She suppressed the desire to throw herself at Nora and tear out her eyes.
“If it’s the two of us we can manage it,” Nora went on, as if in a trance.
That was it. Mathilde turned and slapped her friend as hard as she could. If words weren’t enough to persuade her, maybe physical pain would bring her to her senses.
Nora’s head pivoted violently, and her hair whipped the window. For a few seconds the car was filled with stunned silence. Then Nora turned slowly to Mathilde, her eyes brimming with tears.
She began to sob. Floods of tears that bore away with them the illusion that she could escape punishment, devastating upheaval, and the agony of guilt.
She crashed abruptly back to earth so hard that the shock reverberated through her body, her mind, and her soul.
It would be an endless descent into hell.
Branded forever with the stigma of guilt, that wicked sorceress who insinuates herself into everything, leaving a long trail of venom in her wake.
Mathilde heaved a deep sigh of despair and compassion.
At last Nora seemed to have come to her senses.
Crying would do her good: Mathilde allowed her to purge herself of her pain for several long minutes, before exclaiming, “Damn it, Nora, look at the mess you’ve gotten us into.
” She put her head in her hands. What was she going to do now?
Could she turn around and go home, act as if she knew nothing, get on with her exhausting life as a working mother and wife? Was it too late?
She knew.
She knew that Gérard had died falling from the top of the stairs because Nora had pushed him as she tried to get away.
She was already complicit.
She was already guilty.
And now Nora seemed to have lost her mind. How could she trust her? How could she be sure that, in the event of her being interrogated by the police—which was bound to happen—Nora wouldn’t crack, and tell them everything, dragging Mathilde in her wake?
She could think of only two options: either she helped Nora get rid of the body, leaving her in constant fear that once the body was discovered the autopsy would reveal the real cause of Gérard’s death, and the police would open an investigation.
Or . . .
Or she managed to convince Nora to call the cops.
To explain what had happened. After all, Gérard had no reason to be at her house, much less upstairs.
Her story was plausible, especially if she were the one to deliver it.
If she didn’t, though, if she tried to escape justice, she was signing her own death warrant.
No one would ever believe her story later on.
Mathilde lifted her head and gave a deep sigh. “Nora,” she began, in a voice so somber and lacking in vitality she didn’t recognize it. “I really can’t.”
Nora’s eyes widened.
“Don’t look at me like that, I beg you,” Mathilde said, avoiding her gaze. “I can’t, Nora. For my kids, for Philippe . . .”
“Mathilde!”
“Damn it, Nora!” she snapped, feeling a thudding anxiety pervade her body. “You’re asking me to be nothing more nor less than an accomplice to murder. You’ve completely lost your mind. I can’t take the risk—”
“You can’t just drop me like this,” said Nora, her voice cracking.
“Not now! I have to pick up my kids in twenty minutes and their father’s corpse is lying in the entryway.
Mathilde, I beg you.” She stared at her beseechingly, trying to find the words to persuade her.
“And you’re forgetting Milo,” she went on more assertively, as if she had found the decisive argument in her favor. “He saw you turn up at my house.”
Mathilde looked at her, appalled. Nora was right, there was no getting out of it now. She was in it up to her neck. “Unless you call the cops and tell them what happened.”
Nora was beside herself now. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her face was haggard, her eyes so tear-drenched she couldn’t see. She hiccupped with sobs as she pleaded with her friend, stammering out endless prayers and excuses. Distraught, Mathilde put her arms around her and held her tight.
As she clasped Nora to her, she knew she would never get her to call the police. But she also knew she didn’t have the strength to go any further. She was drained of all energy, and she felt as helpless as her friend. Ashamed, terrified, devastated. She loosened her embrace.
“I’m sorry, Nora. I can’t. I won’t say anything to anyone, but I can’t help you either.
It’s too risky. You have to understand. I—” The words stuck in her throat, her mind was frozen with panic.
If she spoke up now, she could still save her skin.
She could tell the cops she’d tried to get her friend to call and tell them what had happened.
That Nora had promised she would. After that, whatever Nora did, Mathilde would be protected: no one could accuse her of having shielded her friend.
She clung to this logic: her responsibility to her family, the rightness of her decision.
She fixed her gaze on the dashboard, where a photograph of her three children teased her with their beguiling grins, desperately focusing on avoiding Nora’s reproachful expression. Her pleading eyes. Her trembling lips.
“Mathilde . . .” Nora begged in a barely audible gasp, with a moan of utter despair.
Mathilde stared at her lap, unable to confront her friend’s desolation. “I’m sorry,” she replied dully.
Faced with such a pathetic surrender, Nora stopped weeping. She looked at Mathilde with sadness infused with disappointment and slowly nodded her head.
“I understand.”
That was all she said. Time seemed to stand still.
A deathly silence filled the car. Two women, sitting side by side, each trying to break free from the other: Mathilde, bogged down by shame and confusion; Nora, caught between terror and bitterness.
She was on her own now. There was no one else she could count on.
And so, drawing on an undreamed-of reserve of willpower, Nora wiped her eyes and breathed in deeply.
Outside, a light rain was falling on the windscreen in unbroken, parallel rivulets.
She stared at one of the drops that, unlike the others, seemed to be tracing its own path on the damp surface of the glass.
A crazy thought, like this tiny glinting drop, began to glow as if from a great distance, from her dark future, like a cord appearing miraculously from who knew where, tumbling toward her.
Into her mind burrowed a plan. An unbelievable image.
A solution that could perhaps put everything right.
A last exit. A dreadful, despicable, cruel, diabolical idea, so dastardly that she shuddered even to be considering it.
Could she pull it off? And would her nerves prove solid enough to deal with her conscience?
The digital clock on the dashboard told her she had fifteen minutes left before Mélanie’s call.
Fifteen minutes to make a decision.
To make a choice.
To save her skin.