Chapter 47
“Where’s my mom?” asked Nassim, as he and Tiphaine entered the house. “Why didn’t she come to fetch me?”
“Something came up. But don’t you worry, she’ll be back soon.”
Without taking off her jacket, she went into the kitchen and put her purse down on the table along with a bag of groceries.
Then she began opening the drawers one by one.
It didn’t take long to find the drawer with the kitchen utensils, out of which she took several knives.
A bread knife, a carving knife, long knives, paring knives, serrated, not serrated.
She lined them up on the counter and looked at them.
At last she picked out one that had a twenty-centimeter blade, nice and sharp, as fine as a cigarette paper, long and thin and pointed.
Perfect. She put it in her purse, replaced the others, and shut the drawer.
“Nassim, would you like a snack?”
The child appeared in the doorway, with a surly yet uncertain expression on his face.
“Don’t look like that. What’s wrong?”
“I want my mom.”
Tiphaine smiled sympathetically. She went over to the child and crouched down to his height.
“How about we play a game while we wait for her to get back?”
“What kind of game?”
“You want your mom, and I want my little boy. So let’s pretend I’m your mom and you’re my little boy. What do you think?”
Nassim frowned. He looked at Tiphaine with a grave expression, observing the strange smile that wreathed her features in a mask of feigned kindness, lacking any real warmth.
Even though she was trying to look friendly, there was something scary about her, like the reflection of a broken gate that leads to a bottomless pit in which terrifying things lurk.
“I don’t want to play,” he declared warily.
“You’ll see, it’ll be fun. Look, I bought lots of delicious things to eat.”
She straightened up and pointed at the bag of food on the kitchen table. She took out a packet of cookies, a container of vanilla yogurt, and a bottle of fruit juice, all of which she’d bought with him in mind.
“Ta-daaa! Are you hungry?”
She was behaving with an enthusiasm that was slightly grotesque, like a bad actor. There was something ridiculous about the look of elation on her face.
Still frowning, Nassim squinted at the container of yogurt, then looked back at Tiphaine.
“I’ll have some yogurt.”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Please.”
“Please who?”
“Please, Tiphaine.”
Tiphaine rolled her eyes, overplaying an indulgent protest.
“No, Nassim! We’re playing a mom and her little boy, have you already forgotten? Please, who?”
The child felt a knot in his stomach. He knew what Tiphaine wanted to hear, but some instinct told him not to play this strange game.
“Come along!” Tiphaine insisted, sounding like an overexcited teacher. “Please, who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you do!”
Nassim didn’t answer. He looked at her timidly, the knot in his stomach growing bigger and bigger, until he felt like he couldn’t breathe anymore. Tiphaine, meanwhile, was fidgeting with the yogurt with the same fake smile on her face.
Nassim was obstinately refusing to answer, so she decided to help him.
“Please, M . . . Ma . . .”
Silence. Tiphaine’s smile began to fade into an altogether more alarming expression.
“Ma . . .” she said again, trying to encourage Nassim with little nods of the head that were almost parodic.
“. . . man,” he responded eventually.
“There you go,” she exclaimed, as though the child had managed to complete a complicated exercise. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, say the whole sentence.”
Another silence. Nassim was feeling more and more uncomfortable. The knot in his stomach had reached his throat, and he was genuinely finding it hard to breathe.
“Please, Maman . . .” he said at last in a little trembling voice.
“Coming right up, my darling!” she answered, and began preparing his snack. When she was done she told the child to come and sit at the table.
“Not there,” she said, sitting at the chair facing the window, “there!” She pointed at a chair with its back to the window.
“That’s not my chair,” he protested. “That’s where Inès sits.”
“We’re playing a game, sweetheart, remember?” Tiphaine explained in the patient tone of a teacher. “Be good, do what I said.”
Nassim sat where she told him to without further protest. Tiphaine’s ridiculous behavior was increasing his unease; he had the feeling that even the slightest opposition would set off an extreme reaction that could be very scary.
Tiphaine served him a big bowl of yogurt, a glass of orange juice, and several cookies in a beautiful bowl. A snack fit for a king.
“So come on, tell me,” she said, sitting down alongside him.
“What?”
“About your day. What you did, who you played with, what your teacher’s like, your best friends, the kids you don’t like so much . . .”
She was interrupted by a call on her cell phone. She stood up, rummaged in her purse, and drew it out. She squinted at it with a satisfied smile.
“Nora’s on her way.”
She canceled the call, pressing her thumb on the screen with an imperious gesture, then turned and faced the child.
“I’m listening!” she said, as if she were taking a lesson.
“I—I worked . . .”
“I’m sure you did. You worked, you played, you ate, I’ll bet you even went to the bathroom. Tell me everything, but don’t forget to eat your snack.”
Nassim’s throat was so tight he could barely swallow. He plunged his spoon into the yogurt and brought it to his mouth. Never had he struggled to swallow like this.
“I played with Jonathan.”
“Who’s Jonathan?”
“My friend.”
“Your best friend?”
“No.”
“Who’s your best friend?”
“Alexandre.”
“Why didn’t you play with Alexandre, if he’s your best friend?”
“He was out sick today.”
“Okay. Go on. What did you play with Jonathan?”
“Hide-and-seek.”
Tiphaine waited in vain for him to carry on. She gave a disappointed sigh that still managed to sound magnanimous, almost kindly.
“Honestly, Maxime, this is like pulling teeth.”
“My name isn’t Maxime.”
She grimaced at his words. Her jaw clenched, her lips pursed, and her eyes filled with a nasty gleam that didn’t escape the child’s notice.
“It’s for the game,” she explained, not quite able to conceal her annoyance. Then she corrected herself, like a bad actress whose attention had wandered trying awkwardly to get back into character. Nassim started to cry. He had a lump in his throat and a great weight in his stomach.
“What’s the matter, sweetheart?” she said, genuinely taken aback to see the child in tears. “Why are you crying?”
“I want my maman,” he said again, clinging to Tiphaine’s exaggerated kindness.
“I’m right here, my darling. Come sit on my lap.”
Her voice flowed like a nauseating liquid, a foul syrup that sticks to everything and leaves its tacky mark everywhere. She held out her arms to him, convinced he was going to throw himself into them and snuggle up. Nassim wiped his damp cheeks and managed a feeble smile.
“No, I’m okay now.”
“Hey, don’t make me beg. Come give me a hug.”
“I’d rather read a comic,” he said, remembering she’d wanted to do that the last time she’d babysat. Tiphaine’s face lit up with surprise and satisfaction. She beamed at him.
“Great idea!” she said. “Go find the one you want to read and we’ll sit together in the living room.”
He shot off like an arrow.
Tiphaine went into the living room and sat down to wait for him on the sofa facing the bookshelves.
She looked around the room, as if not really seeing the shapes and colors of the room, lost in thought, recalling all the different periods of her life.
Vanished realms. She was diving into the past to escape the present.
Her eyes focused on the shelves, and without thinking she began to decipher the titles on the spines as if they were a coded message, an initiatory, subliminal path ironically recalling the defining events of her life.
Stranger Than Truth by Vera Caspary. The Woman Next Door by Barbara Delinsky.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. The Great Secret by René Barjavel.
Regrets by Joachim du Bellay. Lost Illusions by Honoré de Balzac.
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Her eye fell on an unmarked spine, a book that stood out because of its unusual dimensions.
It was bright green, sandwiched between The Pleasures of Crime by Jacqueline Harpman and “J” Is for Judgment by Sue Grafton.
Tiphaine frowned. A flash. The glimmer of a memory.
An indistinct image. A feeling of suffocation.
Intrigued, she stood up and bounded over in two steps to the bookshelf, took hold of the book, and pulled it out.
It was a folder. Strangely familiar. Where had she seen one that looked exactly like this one?
She opened it and began flicking through the documents inside.