Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,48
face, cling to her hair, push her against the wall. She smoked a cigarette by the living-room window and went back into the kitchen. She put on a pair of plastic gloves and threw the skeleton in the bin. She also threw away the plate and the tea towel that had been lying next to it. She hurried downstairs with the black bags and banged the building’s front door behind her when she came back in.
*
She goes to bed. Her heart is pounding so hard in her chest that she finds it hard to breathe. She tries to sleep and then, unable to bear it any longer, she calls Paul and in tears tells him this story of the chicken. He thinks she’s overreacting. It’s like the script of a bad horror film, he laughs. ‘Surely you’re not going to get into a state like this because of a chicken?’ He tries to make her laugh, to make her question the gravity of the situation. Myriam hangs up on him. He tries to call her back but she doesn’t answer.
*
Her insomnia is haunted by accusatory thoughts and then by guilty thoughts. She starts by hurling abuse at Louise. Then she thinks that the nanny must be mad. Maybe dangerous. That she nurses a sordid hatred for her employers, an appetite for vengeance. Myriam blames herself for not having guessed at the violence of which Louise is capable. She had already noticed that the nanny gets angry about this kind of thing. Once, Mila lost a cardigan at school and Louise threw a fit about it. Every day she talked to Myriam about that blue cardigan. She swore she would find it; she harassed the teacher, the caretaker, the dinner ladies. One Monday morning she saw Myriam dressing Mila. The little girl was wearing the blue cardigan.
‘You found it?’ the nanny asked, looking ecstatic.
‘No, but I bought another one.’
Louise became uncontrollably angry. ‘I can’t believe I tried so desperately to find it. And what does that mean? You get robbed, you don’t take care of your things, but it doesn’t matter because Mama will buy Mila a new cardigan?’
And then Myriam turns these accusations against herself. It’s my fault, she thinks. I went too far. It was her way of telling me that I was wasteful, frivolous, casual. Louise must have been offended that I threw away that chicken, when I know that she has money problems. Instead of helping her, I humiliated her.
She gets up at dawn, feeling as if she’s hardly slept. When she gets out of bed, she immediately sees that the kitchen light is on. She comes out of her bedroom and sees Louise, sitting in front of the little window that overlooks the courtyard. The nanny is holding her cup of tea – the cup that Myriam bought her for her birthday – in both hands. Her face floats in a cloud of steam. Louise looks like a little old lady, like a ghost trembling in the pale morning. Her hair and her skin are drained of all colour. Myriam has the impression that Louise always wears the same clothes nowadays. She feels suddenly sickened by that blue blouse with its Peter Pan collar. She wishes she didn’t have to speak to her. She wishes she could make her disappear from her life, with no effort, with a snap of the fingers or a blink of the eyes. But Louise is there; she smiles at her.
In her thin voice, she asks: ‘Shall I make you a coffee? You look tired.’
Myriam reaches out and takes the hot cup.
She thinks about the long day that awaits her; she has to defend a man in court. In her kitchen, face-to-face with Louise, she considers the irony of the situation. She, Myriam Massé – whose pugnacity everyone admires; whose courage when confronting her adversaries Pascal always praises – is terrified by this little blonde woman.
*
Some teenagers dream of movie sets, football pitches, concert halls packed with fans. Myriam always dreamed of courtrooms. Even as a student, she tried to go as often as she could to watch trials. Her mother didn’t understand how anyone could be so passionate about sordid accounts of rapes, about precise, deadpan descriptions of seedy murders or cases of incest. Myriam was preparing for the Bar exam when the trial of the serial killer Michel Fourniret began. She followed the case closely. She’d rented a room in the centre of Charleville-Mézières and every day she would