Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,47

particular love was laughable, that people would make fun of him, and that anyone who felt sorry for him would be pretending.

*

Hector lowers his head. He stops talking. His mother is sitting on a chair next to him, and she puts her hand on his shoulder. She tells him: ‘You did well, darling.’ But Anne is nervous. Facing the police, she looks guilty. She is trying to find something to confess, some sin she committed long ago, for which they want to punish her. She has always been like this, innocent and paranoid. She has never gone through a security check without sweating. One day, sober and pregnant, she blew into a breathalyser test, convinced that she was about to be arrested.

The captain, a pretty woman with thick brown hair tied back in a ponytail, is sitting on her desk, facing them. She asks Anne how she came into contact with Louise and the reasons she chose to hire her as her children’s nanny. Anne replies calmly. All she wants is to satisfy the policewoman, to help her with her enquiries, and – most of all – to find out what Louise is accused of.

Louise was recommended to her by a friend, who spoke very highly of her. And, for that matter, she herself was always satisfied with her nanny. ‘Hector, as you can tell, was very attached to her.’

The captain smiles at the teenage boy. She goes back behind her desk, opens a file and asks: ‘Do you remember the phone call you got from Mrs Massé? Just over a year ago, in January?’

‘Mrs Massé?’

‘Yes, try to remember. Louise gave you as a reference and Myriam Massé wanted to know what you thought of her.’

‘That’s right, I remember now. I told her that Louise was an exceptional nanny.’

*

They have been sitting for more than two hours in this cold, featureless room. The desk is very neat. There are no photographs on it. There are no wanted posters on the wall. Occasionally the captain stops in the middle of a sentence, apologises and leaves the office. Anne and her son see her through the window, talking on her mobile phone, whispering in a colleague’s ear or drinking a coffee. They have no desire to speak to each other, not even to relieve the boredom. Sitting side by side, they avoid each other, pretending that they have forgotten they are not alone. Sometimes they sigh or stand up and walk around a bit. Hector checks his phone. Anne cradles her black leather handbag. They are bored stiff, but they are too polite and too fearful to show any sign of irritation to the policewoman. Exhausted, submissive, they wait to be released.

The captain prints some documents and hands them to mother and son.

‘Sign here and here, please.’

Anne bends over the sheet of paper and, without looking up, she asks in a hollow voice: ‘What did she do? Louise, I mean. What happened?’

‘She is accused of killing two children.’

There are dark rings around the captain’s eyes. Swollen, purplish bags that give her a solemn look and, oddly, make her even prettier.

*

Hector walks out into the street, into the June heat. The girls are beautiful and he wants to grow up, to be free, to be a man. His eighteen years weigh heavily on him; he’d like to leave them behind, like he left his mother at the door of the police station, dazed and numb. He realises that what he first felt earlier, when the policewoman told them, was not shock or surprise but an immense and painful relief. A feeling of jubilation, even. As if he’d always known that some menace had hung over him, a pale, sulphurous, unspeakable menace. A menace that he alone, with his child’s eyes and heart, was capable of perceiving. Fate had decreed that the calamity would strike elsewhere.

The captain had seemed to understand him. Earlier she had examined his impassive face and she had smiled at him. The way you smile at survivors.

All night long Myriam thinks about that carcass on the kitchen table. As soon as she shuts her eyes, she imagines the animal’s skeleton, right there, next to her, in her bed.

She gulped down her wine, one hand on the little table, watching the carcass from the corner of her eye. She was revolted by the idea of touching it. She had the strange feeling that something might happen if she did, that the creature might come back to life and jump at her