Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,31

come near, who take an interest in this world of women. They drive away the men who smile at the children, who stare at their plump cheeks and their little legs. The grandmothers deplore this: ‘All those paedophiles around nowadays! That didn’t exist, in my day.’

*

Louise does not let Mila out of her sight. The little girl runs from the slide to the swings. She never stops, because she doesn’t want to get cold. Her gloves are soaked and she wipes them on her pink coat. Adam sleeps in his pushchair. Louise has wrapped him up in a blanket and she gently strokes the skin on the back of his neck, between the top of his jumper and the bottom of his woolly hat. The metallic glare of an icy sun makes her squint.

‘Want one?’

A young woman sits next to her, legs apart. She holds out a little jar in which honeyed cakes are stuck together. Louise looks at her. She can’t be more than twenty-five and there is something vulgar about the way she smiles. Her long black hair is dirty and unkempt, but you can tell that she could be pretty. Or attractive, anyway. She has sensual curves, a slightly round belly, thick thighs. She chews her cakes with her mouth open and noisily sucks her honey-covered fingers.

‘No, thank you.’ Louise refuses the offer with a wave of her hand.

‘Where I come from, we always share our food with strangers. It’s only here that I’ve seen people eating on their own.’ A boy of about four comes over to the young woman and she sticks a sweet in his mouth. The little boy laughs.

‘It’s good for you,’ she tells him. ‘But it’s a secret, okay? We won’t tell your mother.’

The little boy is called Alphonse, and Mila likes playing with him. Louise comes to the park every day and every day she refuses the fatty pastries that Wafa offers her. She tells Mila she mustn’t eat any either, but Wafa doesn’t take offence. The young woman is very chatty and on that bench, her hip pressed against Louise, she tells the nanny her life story. Mostly she talks about men.

Wafa reminds her of a big cat, not too subtle but very resourceful. She doesn’t have her official papers yet, but doesn’t seem worried about it. She arrived in France thanks to an old man to whom she used to give massages in a seedy hotel in Casablanca. The man became fond of her hands, so soft, then of her mouth and of her buttocks and, finally, of her entire body, which she offered him, following both her instinct and her mother’s advice. The old man brought her to Paris, where he lived in a shabby apartment and received welfare. ‘He was scared that I’d get pregnant and his children pressured him into kicking me out. But the old man, he wanted me to stay.’

Faced with Louise’s silence, Wafa talks as if she’s confessing to a priest or the police. She tells the nanny the details of a life that will never be recorded. After leaving the old man’s apartment, she was recruited by a woman who signed her up for dating sites aimed at young Muslim women who were illegal immigrants. One evening a man arranged to meet her in a local McDonald’s. The man thought she was beautiful. He made advances. He even tried to rape her. She managed to calm him down. They started talking money. Youssef agreed to marry her for twenty thousand euros. ‘That’s cheap for getting your French papers,’ he explained.

She found this job – a godsend – with a French–American couple. They treat her well, even if they’re very demanding. They rented her a bedsit just around the corner from where they live. ‘They pay my rent, but in exchange I can never say no to them.’

‘I adore this kid!’ she says, staring greedily at Alphonse. Louise and Wafa fall silent. An icy wind sweeps through the park and they know that they will soon have to leave. ‘Poor little boy. Look at him, he can hardly move cos I’ve wrapped him up so warm. If he catches a cold, his mother will kill me.’

Wafa sometimes feels afraid that she will grow old in one of these parks. That she’ll feel her knees crack on these old frozen benches, that she won’t be strong enough to lift up a child any more. Alphonse will grow up. Soon he won’t set foot in