Lullaby - Leila Slimani Page 0,9

heart.’ She takes him at his word. She rereads statements and reports until late at night. She picks out the slightest inaccuracy, spots the smallest procedural error. She works with a fury and in the end she earns her reward. Former clients recommend her to friends. Her name circulates among the prisoners. One young man, who avoided a prison sentence thanks to her, promises to pay her back. ‘You got me out of there. I won’t forget that.’

Once, she was called in the middle of the night and asked to report to the police station. A former client had been arrested for domestic violence. And yet he’d sworn to her that he was incapable of hitting a woman. She got dressed in the dark, soundlessly, at two in the morning, and she leaned down to kiss Paul. He grunted and then turned over.

Often her husband tells her that she is working too hard and that drives her crazy. He is offended by her reaction and makes a big show of his benevolence. He pretends to be concerned about her health, to worry that Pascal is exploiting her. She tries not to think about her children, not to let the guilt eat away at her. Sometimes she starts imagining that they are all in league against her. Her mother-in-law tries to persuade her that ‘if Mila is often ill, it’s because she feels lonely’. Her colleagues never invite her to go for a drink with them after work and are surprised whenever she works until late. ‘But don’t you have children?’ Even the schoolteacher summoned her one morning to talk about a ridiculous incident between Mila and one of her classmates. When Myriam apologised for having missed the latest meetings and for having sent Louise in her place, the grey-haired teacher spread her hands. ‘If you only knew! It’s the modern malaise. All these poor children are left to their own devices while both parents are obsessed by their careers. They’re always running. You know what two words parents say most often to their children these days? “Hurry up!” And of course, we pay the price for all this. The children take out their anxieties and their feelings of abandonment on us.’

Myriam had desperately wanted to put the teacher in her place, but she’d been incapable of doing it. Was it because of that little chair, on which she sat uncomfortably, in this little classroom that smelled of paint and plasticine? The setting, the teacher’s voice, all of this brought her forcefully back to her childhood, to that age of obedience and obligation. Myriam smiled. She stupidly thanked the woman and promised her that Mila would make progress. She didn’t throw the old harpy’s misogyny and moralising back in her face, as she wanted to. She was too afraid that the grey-haired lady would take out her revenge on Mila.

Pascal seems to understand her rage, her vast hunger for recognition, for challenges that measure up to her abilities. Between her and Pascal, a battle begins, and both of them draw an ambiguous pleasure from it. He pushes her; she stands up to him. He exhausts her; she doesn’t disappoint him. One evening he invites her to have a drink with him after work. ‘You’ve been with us for nearly six months. That’s worth celebrating, don’t you think?’ They walk down the street in silence. He holds the door of the bar open for her and she smiles at him. They sit at the back of the room, on an upholstered bench. Pascal orders a bottle of white wine. They talk about one of their dossiers and then, very quickly, start reminiscing about their student years. The big party their friend Charlotte threw in her mansion in the eighteenth arrondissement. The panic attack, absolutely hilarious, that poor Céline suffered on the day of her orals. Myriam drinks fast and Pascal makes her laugh. She doesn’t feel like going home. She would like to have no one she has to call, no one waiting up for her. But there’s Paul. And there are the children.

A gently thrilling, lightly erotic tension burns her throat and her breasts. She runs her tongue over her lips. She wants something. For the first time in a long time, she feels a gratuitous, futile, selfish desire. A desire of her own. Although she loves Paul, her husband’s body is weighed down by memories. When he penetrates her, it is her motherly womb that he enters, her heavy belly,