Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,50

few days. Of the sad look that Louise had given her. Of her moonlike face. She hears again her hazy and slightly ludicrous excuses, her shame at having failed in her duty. ‘It won’t happen again,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

Of course, all she has to do is put an end to it. But Louise has the keys to their apartment; she knows everything; she has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. They will drive her away and she’ll come back. They’ll say their goodbyes and she’ll knock at the door, she’ll come in anyway; she’ll threaten them, like a wounded lover.

Stéphanie

Stéphanie was very lucky. When she started secondary school, Mrs Perrin – Louise’s employer – offered to enrol the young girl in a Parisian school, one with a much better reputation than the school in Bobigny she was due to attend. The woman had wanted to do a good deed for poor Louise, who worked so hard and was so deserving.

But Stéphanie did not repay this act of generosity. The troubles began only a few weeks after the start of the school year. She disturbed the class. She couldn’t stop laughing, throwing objects across the classroom, swearing at her teachers. The other pupils found her simultaneously funny and tiresome. She hid from Louise the notes in her parent–teacher contact book, the warnings, the meetings with the headmaster. She started bunking off and smoking joints in the morning, lying on a bench in a little park in the fifteenth arrondissement.

One evening Mrs Perrin summoned the nanny to tell her how disappointed she was. She felt betrayed. Because of Louise, she had been humiliated. She had lost face with the headmaster, whom she had spent so long persuading and who had been doing her a favour by accepting Stéphanie. A week later Stéphanie was summoned to the disciplinary council, which Louise was also expected to attend. ‘It’s like a court,’ her boss explained coldly. ‘You will have to defend her.’

*

At 3 p.m., Louise and her daughter entered a round, poorly heated room with large windows made of green and blue glass that spread a churchlike light. A dozen people – teachers, counsellors, parent–teacher representatives – were sitting around a large wooden table. They all spoke in turn. ‘Stéphanie is a misfit, undisciplined and rude.’ ‘She’s not a bad girl,’ someone added. ‘But once she gets started, there’s no reasoning with her.’ They are surprised that Louise never reacted, given the scale of this problem. That she didn’t respond to the teachers’ requests for meetings. They had called her on her mobile. They had even left messages, but she never called them back.

Louise begged them to give her daughter another chance. She explained, in tears, how well she took care of her children; how she punished them when they didn’t listen. How she didn’t allow them to watch television while doing their homework. She said she had strong principles and a great deal of experience in the education of children. Mrs Perrin had warned her: this was a trial, and she was the one being judged. Her, the bad mother.

Around the large wooden table, in this freezing room where they all kept their coats on, the teachers tilted their heads sideways. They repeated: ‘We are not questioning your efforts, madam. We are certain that you are doing your best.’

A French teacher – a slim, gentle woman – asked her: ‘How many brothers and sisters does Stéphanie have?’

‘She doesn’t have any,’ replied Louise.

‘But you were talking about your children, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, the children I look after. The ones who stay with me every day. And believe me, my boss is very pleased with the education that I give her children.’

*

They asked her to leave the room so they could deliberate. Louise stood up and smiled at them in a way that she imagined made her look like a woman of the world. In the school corridor, opposite the basketball court, Stéphanie kept laughing idiotically. She was too fat, too tall, and she looked ridiculous with that ponytail on the top of her head. She was wearing printed leggings that made her thighs look enormous. She did not seem intimidated by the formal nature of this meeting, merely bored. She wasn’t afraid; on the contrary, she kept smiling knowingly, as if these teachers in their nerdy mohair jumpers and their old-lady scarves were just bad actors.

As soon as she left the meeting room, her good mood