He pushes the bottles across to Théo. They’re different colours – orange, green, yellow – depending on what drink the alcohol’s mixed with. Théo lines them up in front of him. The sugar has leaked out and the plastic is a bit sticky.
Baptiste finishes explaining: Théo must vary the questions he asks – face card or pips? Higher or lower than the previous one? Inside or outside the last two cards? Each type of question corresponds to the number of mouthfuls to be drunk, up to a maximum of four.
Quentin and Clément nudge each other as Baptiste gives the cards a final shuffle.
Théo takes the packet and asks the first question.
He loses. He drinks.
He asks another question. Loses again. And drinks.
The shrill sound in his head begins to fade.
He follows the rules. A gentle wave runs down his spine and his limbs feel softer, lifted or carried by a sort of light, smooth cotton wool.
He knows when he has to drink or hand over the bottle.
Laughter punctuates each challenge. But he knows that inside him something – some wave or flow – is escaping. He isn’t afraid. He feels his muscles relax one by one: legs, arms, feet, fingers. Even his heart seems to slow, then slow still more. Everything has become fluid. Dilated.
He sees a huge white sheet dancing and flapping in the wind. The sun’s come out again. He thinks he recognises his grandmother’s washing line behind her old stone house.
He hears more laughter, but it isn’t them. It’s a higher note. Crystal, sharp, joyous.
MATHIS
Théo had put the two cards down in front of him, the ten of clubs and the queen of diamonds, face up. He turned to Quentin and asked, ‘Inside or outside?’
Tiny flakes of snow had started dancing around them, but none of them seemed to be landing on the ground. Quentin closed his eyes before he answered.
‘Inside.’
Théo turned over the card he held face down in his hand. Jack of spades.
Théo took the bottle and drank the four mouthfuls the rules demanded. Then suddenly fell backwards. He made a dull thud as he hit the ground.
They looked at each other. Quentin and Clément started laughing, but Baptiste said, ‘Shut it!’
They straightened his legs. His upper body was lying on a carpet of leaves and his lower half on concrete. Baptiste gave him a few little slaps. He kept saying, ‘Hey, hey, stop messing around!’ but Théo didn’t move. Mathis had never seen a body like that, so floppy.
The silence around them felt unreal. The whole city seemed to have obeyed Baptiste and come to a standstill.
Mathis would have sworn he could hear his heart thumping, a metronome like Mr Châle’s, measuring these seconds of terror one by one. The smell of earth and rotting leaves caught his throat.
They looked at each other again. Hugo couldn’t help himself giving a little groan of fear.
Baptiste gave the order: ‘Leg it!’
He grabbed his brother’s collar, stood him in front of him and held him fiercely by the shoulders. He looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘We never came here, right?’
He turned to Mathis and repeated, ‘We were never here, OK?’
Mathis nodded. The cold was cutting through his clothes.
In less than a minute, they’ve gathered everything up – cards, cigarettes, bottles – and disappeared.
Mathis stays behind, by his friend, who looks like he’s in a deep sleep. He gets closer to his face and thinks he can see his breath.
He shakes him several times but Théo doesn’t respond.
Mathis starts crying.
If he calls his mother, he’ll have to admit that he’s not at the Philharmonic. He lied and betrayed her trust. She’ll go crazy. And worst of all, she’ll tell Théo’s parents. And if someone goes to his father’s place, Théo will be angry with him for the rest of his life.
Jumbled, obscure data he can’t decode spins round in his head at high speed, an avalanche of threats he doesn’t know how to put in order.
All his limbs are shaking and his teeth have begun to chatter, like those times he stays in the swimming pool too long.
It’s time for him to go home. He must go home.
He calls, ‘Théo!’ And again. He shakes him, begs him. He tries one last time; his voice has become almost inaudible.
He puts his Puffa jacket on the outstretched body. Then leaves the gardens.
He takes avenue de La Motte-Picquet then the rue de Grenelle. He checks the time again and starts to run.
A few minutes later, he’s outside his building. He taps in the entry code and goes into the lobby. He waits for a few seconds, long enough for his breathing to calm down. He puts his key in the door and instantly hears his mother’s footsteps. She was waiting for him in the living room. She opens her arms in greeting.
She says, ‘You’re frozen.’
He snuggles against her. She strokes his hair and says, ‘Don’t worry. It’s all going to be OK.’ She doesn’t ask him how the concert was. She probably thinks he’s too tired and he’ll tell her tomorrow.
In his room Mathis opens the cupboard where his clothes normally are.
It’s empty.
He looks inside it several times.
Under the sheets, he tries to close his eyes. But images rush into his head, multiplying and dividing, operated by the turn of some invisible kaleidoscope. The colours get brighter and brighter and suddenly the exploded images all come together and appear to him whole. Perfectly clear.
The drawings from Ms Destrée’s class loom up before his eyes, even when he keeps them open: a heart filled with blood whose rhythm is slowing, and then lungs frozen in ice, held in a film of frost, and then blood flowing on his hands, blue.
He sits up in bed; a silent sob tears at his chest.
And then he remembers that Ms Destrée gave them her number on the day of the trip to the Natural History Museum and asked every student to save it.
HÉLÈNE
It was almost midnight when my phone rang. A number I didn’t recognise. I was about to put the light out. I hesitated before answering, but I picked up.
I heard rapid breathing, almost breathless. I almost hung up but I felt as though someone on the other end of the line was struggling not to cry. I waited and said nothing.
After a few seconds, a child’s voice. He was ringing secretly; every word trembled and threatened to break down in sobs.
‘Hello Miss. It’s Mathis Guillaume. I wanted to tell you that Théo has passed out in Santiago du Chili gardens. He’s on his own. Lying on the ground. Right at the back. He’s had a lot to drink.’
I asked him to repeat the important information. How much to drink? How long ago? I pulled on my jeans, grabbed my jacket and left.
In the taxi I called an ambulance. I repeated what Mathis had told me word for word.
The taxi stopped right at the entrance to the gardens. I rushed to climb over the gate. I had set off into the darkness when the taxi driver called to me.
‘Hey! Wait! Take this!’
The wind was puffing up the survival blanket. It seemed to be giving off a light of its own.
Note on the Author
Delphine de Vigan is the prize-winning author of bestselling No and Me, which was a Richard & Judy selection in Britain, Nothing Holds Back the Night, Underground Time and Based on a True Story. She lives in Paris.
Note on the Translator
George Miller is the translator into English of all four of Delphine de Vigan’s previous titles. He is also a regular translator for Le Monde diplomatique’s English-language edition.
Also available by Delphine de Vigan
Based on a True Story
What would you do if your closest friend tried to steal your life?
Today I know that L. is the sole reason for my powerlessness. And that the two years that we were friends almost made me stop writing for ever.
Overwhelmed by the huge success of her lat
est novel, exhausted and unable to begin writing her next book, Delphine meets L.
L. is the kind of impeccable, sophisticated woman who fascinates Delphine; a woman with smooth hair and perfectly filed nails, and a gift for saying the right thing. Delphine finds herself irresistibly drawn to her, their friendship growing as their meetings, notes and texts increase. But as L. begins to dress like Delphine, and, in the face of Delphine’s crippling inability to write, L. even offers to answer her emails, and their relationship rapidly intensifies. L. becomes more and more involved in Delphine’s life until she patiently takes control and turns it upside down: slowly, surely, insidiously.
‘Combining the allure of Gone Girl with the sophistication of literary fiction, Based on a True Story is a creepy but unapologetically clever psychological thriller’ Independent
‘The latest literary sensation ... It has people in a word-of-mouth frenzy I've not seen since Gone Girl ... De Vigan’s description of a close female friendship is a compulsive but agonising read’ Daily Telegraph
‘This is that rare beast – a fine thriller and a potential literary sensation. Patricia Highsmith would have been proud. Don’t miss it’ Daily Mail
Click here to order
Underground Time
‘One of those books that grabs you and demands to be read’ Clare Morrall
Every day Mathilde takes the Metro to the office of a large multinational, where she works in the marketing department. And every day Thibault, a paramedic, drives to the addresses he receives from his controller. Mathilde is unhappy at work, frozen out of office life by her moody boss. Meanwhile, Thibault is unhappy in love and all too aware that he may be the only human being many of the people he visits will see for the entire day. Mathilde and Thibault seem to be just two anonymous figures in a crowded city, pushed and shoved and pressured continuously by the isolating urban world. But surely these two complementary souls, travelling their separate tracks, must meet?
‘Delphine de Vigan is a sensation’ Observer
‘What’s most startling about this novel is how de Vigan makes the mundane come alive. She’s an expert in detail, charging even the most ordinary situation with emotion, which makes for a massively affecting read’ **** Psychologies
‘Sympathetic, compelling, enjoyable’ Guardian
No and Me
‘This novel is a thing of poetic beauty’ The Times
Thirteen-year-old Lou Bertignac’s has an IQ of 160, a mother who barely speaks and hasn’t left the house in years, and a father who is struggling to keep his family together. But then she meets and gradually befriends No, a homeless girl a few years older than herself. As the two girls learn to trust each other, Lou resolves to help her new friend build a stable life for herself, unaware that No’s sudden presence will soon change her family forever.
‘Moments of tenderness and truth about family and home’ Independent on Sunday
‘Well-structured, with moments of tenderness and truth about family and home, inadequate parents and neglected children’ Independent
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First published in Great Britain 2019
This electronic edition published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © JC Lattès, 2018
English translation copyright © George Miller, 2019
Delphine de Vigan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5266-0198-8; TPB: 978-1-5266-0199-5; EBOOK: 978-1-5266-0200-8
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