Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,43

can’t get up. All night she’s been feverish, to the point that her teeth chattered. Her throat is swollen and full of ulcers. Even her own saliva seems impossible to swallow. It’s just after 7.30 when the telephone starts to ring. She doesn’t answer. And yet she sees Myriam’s name on the screen. She opens her eyes, reaches out to the phone and hangs up. She buries her face in the pillow.

The telephone rings again.

This time Myriam leaves a message. ‘Hello, Louise, I hope you’re well. It’s nearly eight o’clock. Mila has been ill since last night – she has a fever. I have a very important case today, as I told you, and I need to be in court. I hope everything’s all right, and that nothing has happened. Call me back when you get this message. We’re expecting you.’ Louise throws the phone to the foot of the bed and rolls herself up in the bedcovers. She tries to forget that she is thirsty and desperate to urinate. She doesn’t want to move.

She has pushed her bed against the wall, closer to the feeble warmth of the radiator. Lying like this, her nose is almost pressed up to the windowpane. Eyes turned to the skeletal trees in the street, she can find no way out. She has the strange certainty that all struggle is futile. That all she can do is let events carry her away, wash over her, overwhelm her, while she remains passive and inert. The day before, she gathered all the envelopes. She opened them and tore up the letters, one by one. She threw the pieces in the sink and turned on the tap. Once they were wet, the scraps of paper stuck together, forming a foul paste that she watched disintegrate under the trickle of hot water. The telephone rings, again and again. Louise has covered it with a cushion, but the shrill ringing stops her falling back asleep.

*

In the apartment, Myriam paces around in a panic, her lawyer’s robes draped on the stripy chair. ‘She’s not coming back,’ she tells Paul. ‘This won’t be the first time that a nanny has just vanished overnight. I’ve heard lots of stories like that.’ She tries calling her again, but in the face of Louise’s silence she feels completely helpless. She blames Paul. She accuses him of having been too harsh, of treating Louise like a mere employee. ‘We humiliated her,’ she says.

Paul tries to reason with his wife. Perhaps Louise has a problem; something probably happened. She would never dare abandon them like this, without an explanation. And she’s so attached to the children, she couldn’t leave them without saying goodbye. ‘Instead of coming up with crackpot theories, you should find out her address. Look on her contract. If she doesn’t answer in the next hour, I’ll go to her apartment.’

Myriam is crouched on the floor, going through the drawers, when the telephone rings. In a barely audible voice, Louise makes her excuses. She is so ill that she hasn’t managed to get out of bed. She fell asleep this morning and didn’t hear her phone ringing. At least ten times she repeats, ‘I’m sorry.’ Myriam is caught out by this simple explanation. She feels slightly ashamed not to have even thought of it: a straightforward health problem. As if Louise were infallible, her body immune to fatigue and illness. ‘I understand,’ Myriam replies. ‘Get some rest. We’ll find another solution.’

Paul and Myriam call friends, colleagues, family. Finally someone gives them the number of a female student who ‘can help out if you’re desperate’, and who, thankfully, agrees to go to their apartment straight away. The girl – a pretty blonde of twenty – does not inspire much confidence in Myriam. After entering the apartment, she slowly takes off her high-heeled ankle boots. Myriam notices that she has a hideous tattoo on her neck. To every recommendation that Myriam makes, she replies ‘Yeah’ without really seeming to understand, as if she just wants to get rid of this nervous, nagging boss. With Mila, who is dozing on the sofa, she overdoes the solicitude, acting like a worried mother when the truth is she is still a child herself.

But it’s in the evening, when she goes home, that Myriam is overwhelmed. The apartment is in chaos. Toys are scattered all over the living-room floor. The dirty dishes have been tossed in the sink. There are dried-out mashed-carrot stains on the little table. The girl gets