Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,13

without pausing. She never forgot that taste of rotting melon, that sour taste which stayed in her mouth for days afterwards.

On Saturday evenings she would sometimes accompany her mother to vast-seeming apartments where they would babysit. Beautiful, important women passed her in the corridor, leaving a lipstick trace on their children’s cheeks. The men didn’t like to wait in the living room, embarrassed by the presence of Louise and Stéphanie. They hopped up and down on their heels, smiling stupidly. They scolded their wives then helped them put their coats on. Before leaving, the woman would crouch down, balanced on her thin stilettos, and wipe the tears from her son’s cheeks. ‘Don’t cry any more, my love. Louise is going to tell you a story and give you a hug. Aren’t you, Louise?’ Louise would nod. She held those children as they struggled and screamed that they wanted their mothers. Sometimes, Stéphanie hated them. She was horrified by the way they hit Louise, the way they talked to her like little tyrants.

While Louise put the children to bed, Stéphanie would rummage through drawers and in boxes left on pedestal tables. She pulled out photograph albums hidden under coffee tables. Louise cleaned everything. She did the washing-up and wiped the kitchen countertops with a sponge. She folded the clothes that madam had tossed on her bed before leaving, hesitating over which outfit to wear. ‘You don’t have to do the washing-up,’ Stéphanie would repeat. ‘Come and sit with me.’ But Louise adored that. She adored observing the parents’ delighted faces when they came home and realised that they’d had a free cleaning lady as well as a babysitter.

*

The Rouviers, for whom Louise worked for several years, took them to their country house. Louise worked and Stéphanie was on holiday. But she wasn’t there, like the hosts’ children, to sunbathe and stuff herself with fruit. She wasn’t there to bend the rules, to stay up late and learn to ride a bicycle. If she was there, it was because no one knew what else to do with her. Her mother told her to be discreet, to play silently. Not to give the impression that she was taking advantage of the situation. ‘I know they said this was sort of our holiday too, but if you have too much fun they’ll take it badly.’ At the table, she sat next to her mother, away from the hosts and their guests. She remembers that the other people talked and talked while she and her mother lowered their eyes and swallowed their meals in silence.

The Rouviers found it hard to deal with the little girl’s presence. It embarrassed them; it was almost physical. They felt a shameful antipathy towards that dark-haired child, in her faded swimsuit, that clumsy child with her blank face. When she sat in the living room, next to little Hector and Tancrède, to watch television, the parents couldn’t help feeling annoyed. They always ended up asking her to do them a favour – ‘Stéphanie, be a sweetie, go and fetch my glasses from the entrance hall’ – or telling her that her mother was expecting her in the kitchen. Thankfully, Louise forbade her daughter from going near the pool, without the Rouviers even having to say anything.

*

On the second-to-last day of the holiday, Hector and Tancrède invited some neighbour kids to play with them on their brand-new trampoline. Stéphanie, who was hardly any older than the boys, did some impressive tricks. Some risky jumps and somersaults that brought shouts of enthusiasm from the other children. In the end Mrs Rouvier asked Stéphanie to get down, to let the little ones play. She went over to her husband and, in a compassionate voice, said to him: ‘Maybe we shouldn’t invite her again. I think it’s too hard for her. It must be tough, seeing all the things she’s not allowed to do.’ Her husband smiled with relief.

Myriam has been waiting for this evening all week long. She opens the front door of the apartment. Louise’s handbag is on the armchair in the living room. She hears children’s voices singing. A song about a green mouse and boats on the water, something turning and something floating. She moves forward on tiptoes. Louise is kneeling on the floor, leaning over the edge of the bath. Mila dunks the body of her Russian doll into the water and Adam claps his hands as he sings. Delicately, Louise picks up balls of foam and places them