Chapter 41
Nora splashed her face with cold water and made herself go downstairs.
The children had eaten lunch, and now Nassim was settled in front of the PlayStation and Inès was in the middle of one of her seemingly endless conversations with Léa—or was it Emma?
—on her BlackBerry. The indifference with which they greeted Nora was salutary: the less they demanded of her, the better her mood.
She gave each child a brief hug, which they barely acknowledged, then walked over to the door that led onto the deck.
She stepped outside, squinting at the back of the yard to see if she could make out any traces of the previous night’s activity.
There were marks on the grass where she had dragged the body, and she knew she was going to have to spend the morning mowing.
Farther back, the end of the hedge didn’t seem to have suffered too badly, but Nora didn’t dare go down there in case Tiphaine, Sylvain, or Milo spotted her from an upstairs window—she didn’t want to draw the slightest attention to that end of the yard.
She turned back and went inside to make herself coffee.
Then, knowing she had no time to lose, she went upstairs to get dressed.
Ten minutes later she began mowing the grass with particular care.
When she reached the end she peered at the gap between the hedge and the wall through which she had managed to push Gérard’s body.
There were a few broken branches on the ground, which she kicked into the pile of grass clippings.
The night before, once she had realized there was no way she was going to be able to hoist Gérard’s body over the hedge, Nora had almost given in to despair.
But as she felt blindly up and down the hedge, she noticed a gap between the end of it and the boundary wall.
At first glance it looked too narrow for the body to pass through, but by pushing the branches aside perhaps she could do it.
Once again, adrenaline, fear, and nervous tension gave her a surge of energy: she took hold of the corpse by the armpits and pulled it with all her strength as close as she could to the spot she’d identified, where she leaned it against the wall, facing away from the hedge.
Then with a massive kick she pushed it through the branches.
Gérard collapsed miserably in the middle of the hedge.
Nora stifled a cry of victory. All she had to do now was step over the body into the next-door yard and pull it toward her.
Gathering her courage, she grabbed the end of the tarpaulin and bumped it along slowly and haphazardly, almost falling backward with each tug.
Utterly exhausted, Nora had to draw on all her strength not to give up and simply kill herself.
Hang herself from the top of the stairs.
For a second, the image of a hanged man appeared in her mind, and Gérard’s words came back to her: “The cops didn’t really have any evidence against the guy, and he was released that evening. I drove him home. And it was here. The next day, he was found hanging in the stairwell.”
A man had hanged himself here, or in the house next door, because he had been accused of a crime he said he hadn’t committed. And now she, Nora, was thinking of hanging herself to atone for a crime of which she was well and truly guilty.
Life seemed so grimly ironic that she was tempted to abandon the whole thing.
Let events follow their course. Stop fighting it.
What was the point? It was all going to end badly.
Again, it was the thought of her children that forced her to pull herself together.
She was filled with the determination of a mother protecting her children.
How could she give up now? The thought of Inès’s and Nassim’s lives falling apart because of the tragedy that was racing head-on toward them—their mother, who had killed their father then hanged herself, or been taken away by police, she didn’t know which was worse—gave her a bit of energy, like a spell that can’t be broken.
She had to carry on. She had no choice. As long as she was able to breathe, she had to do everything to protect her children.
At last she got the body to the other side of the hedge and began to glimpse the end of the nightmare.
It was only a few more meters to the compost bin.
The row of bushes that Tiphaine had planted to protect the yard from the smell that rose from the compost hid her from the house.
No one would be able to see her. She dragged the corpse over to it and then, using the last of her energy, began to empty the compost bin, first by fistfuls, then handfuls, then armfuls, paying no heed to the stink or the dirt.
She moved frenetically, as if the physical contact with the rotting vegetables mixed with earth was a way of evacuating her soul of the shame contaminating her.
As though by smearing herself with garbage she would not become garbage.
It was a pathetic attempt at appeasement.
She felt dirty. Debased. A piece of garbage in the middle of all this shit.
She finished the grim job in a daze. Once the bin was empty, she unrolled the tarpaulin to free Gérard’s body, then tipped it in, not before putting his phone back inside his jacket pocket. Then she repeated the operation in the opposite direction, blanketing the corpse in compost.
Buried under the scrap heap.
Buried in muck.
R.I.P.
“Maman, have you heard from Papa?”
Inès came out into the yard, having apparently run out of things to talk about with Emma (or Léa). Nora jumped, abruptly delivered from her horrific memories.
“No,” she said.
“Have you called him?”
“Not yet.”
Realizing how odd it was that she still hadn’t tried to get ahold of Gérard, who was supposed to be looking after the children and had shown no sign of life since the previous day, she hurriedly tried to explain herself.
“To be honest, I don’t want to call him. He should be the one calling me. I’m mad at him. I hope he has a very good explanation for his behavior.”
“But, Maman, this is weird. Maybe something’s happened to him.”
“What are you talking about? He was busy at work, didn’t notice the time, and when he realized how late it was, he rushed home. But then he saw my message and decided he’d rather get a good night’s sleep before he had to face me.”
Inès looked skeptically at her mother.
“Okay,” said Nora. “I’ll finish mowing the grass and then I’ll call him.”
“Do it now,” her daughter begged.
“When I’ve finished mowing the grass,” replied her mother.
Inès pursed her lips and glared at her. Then she turned on her heel. “I’ll call him myself,” she muttered as she went inside.
Nora frowned as she watched her daughter disappear into the house, then hurried to finish the mowing.
A few minutes later, Inès came back outside. “It’s still going straight to voice mail. Something’s not right.”
“Call Mélanie and ask if she’s heard from him.”
“What’s wrong with you? Why would Mélanie have heard from him and not us?
We don’t need to call Mélanie, we need to call the cops.
Papa’s disappeared, and we have no idea where he is.
” Inès looked both furious and bewildered at her mother’s lack of concern about what had happened to her father.
Nora had to admit she had a point. And their recent separation in no way justified her blatant lack of interest.
“Last night, before Mélanie called me to complain that your father hadn’t arrived, Milo rang at the door,” said Nora, as if suddenly recalling something that might be important. “Apparently, your father paid a visit to the neighbors yesterday afternoon.”
“Papa went to see the Geniots?” Inès looked astonished. “Why?”
“I have no idea,” Nora lied.
“And you’re telling me that just now? We have to go see them, find out what time he left!”
Go to see the Geniots? Find herself face-to-face with Tiphaine? Out of the question! And yet, if she hadn’t told Inès this valuable information, her daughter would begin to ask serious questions about her mother’s refusal to act.
“All right, I’ll call him,” she said in a grave tone of voice.
The two of them went inside and Nora called Sylvain. It rang three times before going to voice mail. Clearly Sylvain didn’t want to answer her call. Nora felt a touch of regret: obviously her ex-lover didn’t want to take the risk of having any contact with her.
“It’s gone to voice mail,” she said to Inès, sounding disappointed.
“I’m going to call Milo,” Inès declared.
She took her BlackBerry, dialed Milo’s number, and held it up to her ear. She heard it ring once, twice . . . and then the voice mail clicked on before the third ring.
“He’s declined the call!” she exclaimed, shocked.
“Like father, like son,” thought Nora to herself, mortified for her daughter.
Had Tiphaine told Milo, and now he was furious with her, and consequently with Inès?
She knew that her daughter had a crush on the boy and was annoyed with her for interfering—even without meaning to—in her love life.
She looked at Inès, perplexed, even as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to put off the inevitable hostilities for much longer.
“All right, I’ll call the police,” she said.