Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,12

has begun. She hollers like a mad girl and claps her hands. Adam follows her lead. He laughs so hard that he can hardly stand, and several times he falls on to his bottom. They call her name, but Louise does not respond. ‘Louise? Where are you?’ ‘Watch out, Louise, we’re coming, we’re going to find you.’

Louise says nothing. She does not come out of her hiding place, even when they scream, when they cry, when they fall into despair. Crouching in the shadows, she spies on Adam as he panics, lying on his back and sobbing. He doesn’t understand. He calls out ‘Louise’, swallowing the last syllable, snot dribbling over his lips, his cheeks purple with rage. Mila, too, ends up being scared. For a moment, they start to believe that Louise has really gone, that she has abandoned them in this apartment where night will soon fall, that they are alone and she will not come back. The anguish is unbearable and Mila begs the nanny. She says: ‘Louise, this isn’t funny. Where are you?’ The child becomes annoyed, stamps her feet. Louise waits. She watches them as if she’s studying the death throes of a fish she’s just caught, its gills bleeding, its body shaken by spasms. The fish wriggling on the bottom of the boat, sucking the air through its exhausted mouth, the fish that has no chance of surviving.

Then Mila starts uncovering the hiding places. She has realised that she must open doors, lift up curtains, squat down to look under the bed. But Louise is so slim that she always finds new lairs where she can take refuge. She crawls into the laundry basket, under Paul’s desk, or to the back of a cupboard, where she covers herself with a blanket. Sometimes she hides in the shower cubicle, in the darkness of the bathroom. So, Mila searches in vain. She sobs and Louise remains motionless. The child’s despair does not make her yield.

One day, Mila doesn’t cry any more. Louise is caught in her own trap. Mila stays silent, pacing around the hiding spot and pretending not to know that the nanny is there. She sits on the laundry basket and Louise feels as if she will suffocate. ‘Truce?’ whispers the child.

But Louise doesn’t want to surrender. She just sits there, knees pressed to her chin, not saying a word. The little girl’s feet tap softly against the wicker laundry basket. ‘Louise, I know you’re in there,’ she says, laughing. Suddenly Louise stands up, knocking Mila to the floor. Her head bangs against the bathroom tiles. Dazed, the child cries and then, seeing the triumphant, resuscitated Louise standing above her, staring down at her from the heights of her victory, Mila’s terror is transformed to hysterical joy. Adam runs to the bathroom and joins in the girls’ jig of delight, the three of them giggling until they can hardly breathe.

Stéphanie

At eight years old, Stéphanie knew how to change a nappy and prepare a baby’s bottle. Her movements were sure and her hand did not tremble as she slipped it under the fragile neck of a newborn and lifted it up from the cot. She knew they had to be laid down on their backs and never shaken. She gave them baths, holding them firmly by the shoulder. The screams and cries of babies, their laughter and their tears were the soundtrack to her memories as an only child. Adults were thrilled by the love she showed the little ones. They thought she was exceptionally maternal and devoted for such a young girl.

When Stéphanie was a child, her mother, Louise, ran a crèche at home. Or rather in Jacques’s home, as he always insisted on pointing out. In the mornings, the mothers dropped off their children. She remembers those women, rushed and sad, standing with their ears glued to the door. Louise taught her to listen for their anxious footsteps in the corridor of the apartment building. Some of them went back to work very soon after giving birth and they handed their tiny newborns over to Louise. They also gave her – in opaque bags that Louise put in the fridge – the milk they’d pumped during the night. Stéphanie remembers those little containers arrayed on the shelf of the fridge with the children’s names written on them. One night she got up and opened the bag belonging to Jules, a red-faced baby whose sharp nails had scratched her cheek. She drank it all