Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,38

her hand on her side; she has a stitch and it’s killing her, but she doesn’t slow down.

There’s no one to help her cross the road. Normally there’s always someone in a fluorescent vest, holding a little sign. Either that young man with bad teeth whom she suspects has just got out of prison, or that tall black woman who knows all the children’s names. There’s no one outside the school either. Louise stands there alone, like an idiot. A bitter taste stings her tongue. She wants to throw up. The children aren’t there. She walks with her head lowered now, in tears. The children are on holiday. She’s alone; she’d forgotten. She hits her own forehead anxiously.

*

Wafa calls her several times a day, ‘just for a chat’. One evening she asks if she can come round to see Louise. Her bosses are away on holiday too and for once she is free to do what she wants. Louise wonders what Wafa wants from her. She finds it hard to believe that anyone could be so desperate for her company. But she is still haunted by her nightmare from the day before and she agrees.

She arranges to meet her friend outside the Massés’ apartment building. In the lobby, Wafa talks loudly about the surprise that she has for Louise, hidden inside the large woven-plastic bag she is carrying. Louise shushes her. She is afraid that someone will hear them. Solemnly she climbs the stairs and opens the door to the apartment. The living room strikes her as heartbreakingly sad and she presses her palms to her eyes. She wants to retrace her steps, to get rid of Wafa, to return to the television which spits out its reassuring swill of images. But Wafa has put her plastic bag on the kitchen countertop and she takes from it some packets of spices, a chicken and one of the glass jars containing her honeyed cakes. ‘I’m going to cook for you, okay?’

For the first time in her life, Louise sits on the sofa and watches someone make her a meal. Even as a child, she doesn’t remember ever seeing anyone do that, just for her, just to make her happy. As a little girl, she used to eat other people’s leftovers. She was given lukewarm soup in the morning, a soup that was reheated day after day until every last drop of it was gone. She had to eat all of it despite the cold fat stuck to the sides of the bowl, despite that taste of sour tomatoes, gnawed bones.

Wafa pours her a vodka mixed with ice-cold apple juice. ‘I like alcohol when it’s sweetened,’ she says, clinking her glass against Louise’s. Wafa is still standing. She picks up the ornaments, looks at the shelves of the bookcase. A photograph catches her eye.

‘Is that you? You’re pretty in that orange dress.’ In the photograph Louise is smiling, her hair loose. She is sitting on a low wall, holding a child in each arm. Myriam insisted on putting that picture in the living room, on one of the shelves. ‘You’re part of the family,’ she told the nanny.

Louise remembers clearly the moment when Paul took that photograph. Myriam had gone into a ceramics shop and she was struggling to make up her mind. Louise was looking after the children in the street lined with shops. Mila stood on the wall. She was trying to catch a grey cat. That was when Paul said: ‘Louise, kids, look at me. The light’s perfect.’ Mila sat next to Louise and Paul called out: ‘Now, smile!’

*

‘This year,’ Louise says, ‘we’re going back to Greece. There, to Sifnos,’ she adds, pointing at the photograph with her painted fingernail. They haven’t talked about this yet, but Louise is certain that they will return to their island, swim in the clear sea and eat dinner on the port, by candlelight. Myriam makes lists, she explains to Wafa, who sits on the floor, at her friend’s feet. Lists that she leaves in the living room, even in the sheets of their bed, and she wrote on those lists that they will go back there soon. They will go for walks in rocky inlets. They will trap crabs, sea urchins and sea cucumbers that Louise will watch shrinking at the bottom of a bucket. She will swim, further and further out, and this year Adam will join her.

And then, the end of the holiday will draw closer. The day before they