Three Days and a Life

by Pierre Lemaitre

  It was a simple, sad statement. Émilie stumbled and grabbed his sleeve, but instantly she let go, as though the situation made her gesture inappropriate. Antoine felt as though he had done something wrong.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not declaring my undying love!”

  “I know.”

  As they came to his house, Antoine remembered seeing Émilie’s face at her bedroom window on the day of the storm.

  “You looked so tired . . . And you were so pretty. You were really . . . beautiful.”

  This belated confidence made her smile.

  She pushed open the gate, walked to the end of the garden and sat on the swing-seat which creaked softly. Antoine joined her. The seat was much narrower than it looked, or perhaps it was tilted slightly . . . Antoine felt Émilie’s soft, warm hip pressed against him, he tried but failed to edge away.

  Émilie gave a little push with her feet and they swung. A pale yellow light spilled from the streetlamp. Everything was silent, they did not say anything.

  The movement of the swing pressed them closer together. Then Antoine did something he knew he should not do: he took Émilie’s hand in his and she snuggled into him.

  They kissed. From the first moment, it was a disaster.

  He did not like the way she kissed, the avid probing of her tongue made him think of a dental examination, but he carried on because, in the end, it didn’t matter as they did not love each other. That made everything more simple.

  It was a harmless fling, a comfortable flirtation, the consequence of years spent in each other’s company without ever touching. They could do this now precisely because they did not have to. They had been childhood friends. There was history between them, they needed to close the gap. To be sure. To have no regrets. The little girl he had been so in love with had nothing to do with the young woman in his arms who was stunning but stupid. And who, at this moment, he eagerly desired.

  Everything about the situation was artificial, they both understood this, but they also knew that what they had started would carry on to its logical, inevitable conclusion.

  Antoine slipped his hand into Émilie’s blouse and cupped a warm, supple breast, she placed her hand on his crotch. They continued their awkward, irrepressible kiss, spittle trickled down their chins, they did not stop for fear of having to speak.

  Antoine gave a stifled moan as his fingers found her warm and wet.

  Her hand, as she grasped him, was like her lips: clumsy, single-minded, brusque.

  They wriggled out of their clothes.

  Émilie turned and placed her hands on the back of the swing-seat, legs parted slightly. In an instant, Antoine was inside her. She arched her back, encouraging him to go deeper, and bent her head so she could kiss him again, greedily, thrusting her tongue with the same eagerness. She gave a soft, animal whimper as she felt him tense and come inside her . . . He would never know whether she had come too.

  They stayed pressed against each other, uncertain what to do, fearful of even looking at each other. Then they started to laugh. A remnant of their childhood came back to them, the impression that they had played a trick on the grown-ups, on life.

  Antoine, all thumbs, pulled up his trousers, Émilie balanced precariously as she slipped on her underwear and smoothed down her dress.

  She gave her little laugh, squeezed her knees together, hand on her belly like a child surprised at being taken short. She rolled her eyes and waved a hand up and down, fingers splayed, as though shaking off water, uh-oh, uh-oh . . .

  She kissed Antoine – a quick peck on the lips – and then dashed off. When she got to the gate, she turned and blew him another kiss.

  Even their parting was a fiasco.

  Had his childhood not ended when he first came face to face with death, the day he killed Rémi, Antoine would have said that it ended that night.

  He checked his mobile as he went indoors.

  Laura had called four times but left no message. He punched in her number, but hung up immediately. Talking to her, which meant lying to her, was more than he could face. The evening had been a disaster, he could not understand how things could possibly have turned out as they had. Passion, maybe. But honestly, for all the passion he still felt for Émilie . . . He would have ended up in an argument.

  He gave up on the idea of calling Laura, he would make some excuse . . . He would think of something.

  His mother had kept his room for him, though the wallpaper and the furniture were new. His school desk, his chair, his old bed and almost everything else had been lovingly stowed away in the cellar, but a handful of objects had been spared this exile: a globe, a poster of Zidane, a rucksack, a pencil-case, his Megatron Transformer, a cushion emblazoned with the Union Jack – a curious selection whose logic Antoine had never deciphered.

  He hated these things that brought him back to a time he tried to keep at bay, but since he rarely came home, and since his mother had taken great pains to redecorate his room, he had neither the heart nor the energy to follow his instinct to toss everything into a box and leave it out on the pavement.

  His mobile vibrated. Laura again. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. He felt ill at ease in this time, in this room, in this place, in this life, he could not summon the courage to answer.

  When the mobile finally stopped throbbing, he breathed once more, and heard voices out in the street. His mother was coming home with the Mouchottes. What would have happened had he and Émilie been caught shagging on the swing-seat like a couple of teenagers?

  It was too late now to get into bed and feign sleep. He sat at the table so it looked as though he were working. It was ridiculous and humiliating to engage in such pretence, but what else could he do?

  Having noticed the light on in his bedroom, his mother came upstairs.

  “You shouldn’t work so late, darling, you need your beauty sleep!”

  The phrase she had said over and over down the years, one that masked her pride at having a hard-working son, a successful son. She walked across the room and opened the windows in order to close the shutters, then she stopped, suddenly struck by a thought.

  “I meant to say, you know they’re planning to redevelop Saint-Eustache?”

  Antoine felt a shudder run down his spine.

  “How do you mean ‘redevelop’ . . .? Redevelop what?” Madame Courtin turned back to the window.

  “Well, they finally tracked down all the heirs. The mairie has bought the land and they’re planning on building an amusement park for children. To listen to them, there’ll be kids flocking to it from all over the département. Me, I’m not convinced.”

  Faced with any proposal, any initiative, Madame Courtin always began by expressing serious misgivings.

  “They say they’ve conducted surveys, that it’ll appeal to families, that it’ll create local jobs. We’ll see. Right, time you got some sleep, Antoine.”

  “Who told you all this? About the park . . .”

  “The plans have been posted in the mairie for a couple of months now, but what do you expect, you’re never here, so you’re hardly likely to know what’s going on . . .”

  *

  The following morning, Antoine set off for his jog early. He had not slept a wink.

  At the mairie, on the display board where official notices were posted, he pored over the press release announcing the development of the parc Saint-Eustache.

  Work on clearing the site was to begin in September.

  16

  The holidays were a nightmare. He was wracked with worry. He had passed his exams, but he came through the ordeal utterly drained. He never wanted to set foot in Beauval again. It was irrational, since he would have to visit his mother sooner or later, but he made excuses, explaining that he was going on a long trip – though lack of funds meant that he and Laura only went away for a fortnight. The computer-generated image of a teenage Rémi Desmedt had been a shock, but the news that Saint-Eustache was to be redeveloped meant disaster, and he c
ould not know how or when it would come. His mind dragged him back to the most harrowing period of his life, one which had come to entirely define his childhood. They would find the body. The investigation would be reopened. The police would re-question witnesses. He had been among the last people to see the boy alive, he would be called in. The theory that the child had been abducted by a passing stranger would be dismissed, the investigation would focus on Beauval, on the inhabitants, the family, the neighbours and, inevitably, the clues would lead them to him. It would all be over. Worn down by the last twelve years, he would not have the strength to lie.

  Antoine spent the whole summer fantasising about running away. He researched places from which he could not be extradited. But deep down he knew he would not do it, he did not have the nature or the temperament to be a fugitive in a foreign country (even this romantic word was at odds with who he was). His life had always seemed to him to be narrow and restricted, he was not some ruthless, cynical, highly organised, career criminal, he was just an ordinary murderer who had been lucky until now.

  He resigned himself to staying put, to waiting, and slipped into a morose, anguished acceptance.

  Now that he was an adult, it was not the thought of prison that terrified him, but the ordeal: the trial, the newspapers, the television, the media swooping on Beauval, stalking his mother, the headlines, the interviews with experts, the articles by legal commentators, the photographers, the statements by neighbours . . . He pictured Émilie staring vacuously into the camera, she would not boast about their night together. The mayor would do his best to absolve the town of blame, but it would be futile: Beauval had nurtured both victim and killer, they had grown up barely a dozen metres apart. They would goad Madame Desmedt to tears so that they could film her, flanked by Valentine juggling her three little brats, and gravely pose the question, the sempiternal question: How is it possible for a twelve-year-old to become a murderer? Everyone would lap up the story since, compared to him, they would feel splendidly normal. Some television channel would broadcast a documentary about famous historical murder cases, going back as far as police records would allow. The Beauval murder would exorcise the violent urges of the whole populace, people could happily lay the blame on a single person and have the satisfaction of seeing that person punished for an act of which any one of them would have been capable.

  In a few short minutes he would soar to the firmament of memorable murderers. He would cease to exist. Antoine Courtin would no longer be a person, he would become a brand name.

  His mind was in turmoil, whirling with terrifying images, then abruptly Antoine came back to earth and realised that for the past half hour he had not spoken, or listened or responded to Laura’s questions.

  They lived in a little apartment in an area some distance from the university campus, but close to the teaching hospital.

  If their three years together had been a wild, never-ending sexual odyssey, since Antoine’s return from Beauval in June they had barely had physical contact. Laura did not give up easily, and Antoine played along with various little games in which his virility was not required. Although she was frustrated, Laura waited for things to improve. The Antoine she knew had never been particularly cheerful; he was quiet and secretive, grave and apprehensive, and this was precisely what she loved about him. he was moodily handsome – happiness simply made him dull. His gravitas gave those around him a feeling of solidity brutally undermined by his sudden panic attacks. And lately, his anxiety had escalated to a worrying degree. Laura assumed there were problems with his family. Or perhaps he was beginning to question his vocation as a doctor? Eventually she was drawn to a hypothesis that was as likely as it seemed impossible: Antoine was seeing another woman.

  For Laura, jealousy required an effort that she simply could not summon the energy to feel jealous. In desperation, she fell back on a psychiatric explanation, which was all the more reassuring for a doctor: if she could not address the root causes of the problem, medication would tackle the symptoms.

  She was preparing to raise the subject with him when she discovered, quite by chance, that Antoine was already taking a daily dose of tranquillisers.

  July and August passed.

  Madame Courtin was worried that Antoine had not been to see her since June. She kept a mental record of his visits and could reel off the exact dates he had been to Beauval over the past five years. Curiously, she did not complain to him, she merely noted that he came less frequently, as though his estrangement was the result of a tacit agreement that was regrettable but necessary.

  Several times a week, when it hit him that work was soon to begin on the amusement park at Saint-Eustache, Antoine was transported back to his last day in Beauval, to those wretched, worthless hours, to the image of the teenage Rémi, to the party he would not have attended but for his mother’s insistence, to the foolish moments spent with Émilie.

  The reasons for what happened between them remained a mystery. He had wanted to possess her because she was attractive and as a sop to his childhood obsession, it was a small measure of desire and a larger one of revenge. But what about her, what had she wanted? Had she wanted him, or something else? Had she simply played along? No – she had been a willing participant, he remembered her pervasive tongue, her hand, the way she had turned, had arched her back, the way she looked into his eyes at the moment he entered her.

  At this distance, he was still torn in his feelings for the woman. In his mind, her beauty, which rated very highly on his scale of values, was inextricably linked with the depressing inanity of her conversation. He remembered her childish enthusiasm when she had talked about her old photographs.

  The most inconsequential ideas clearly remained lodged in her memory, because in mid-September, in a telephone call with his mother, Madame Courtin mentioned that Émilie had come by to ask for his address.

  “She wants to send you something, she didn’t say what.”

  This thing about the photographs kept playing on his mind.

  He imagined opening the envelope, and in his dreams his own face was superimposed with that of Rémi at six and Rémi at seventeen, and the morphed image looked like the ghostly faces on the headstones of children who have died too young.

  He thought about the sideboard in the Desmedts’ house, about the space left by the missing photo frame that seemed to be waiting for justice to be done.

  He resolved that, when the photographs arrived, he would throw them away without even opening the envelope. It was not as though he would need to explain himself, in the years he had been visiting Beauval he had barely seen Émilie, and now, fortunately, his visits were even more infrequent . . .

  Late September.

  This was when Émilie made her appearance, not in the form of an envelope of photographs but as Émilie herself, in the flesh, wearing a print dress that was frankly ridiculous but did nothing to hide her beauty. Carefully made up, perfumed and styled as though for a wedding, she was radiant as she rang the doorbell. Laura opened, Hello, I’m Émilie, I’ve come to see Antoine.

  For Laura, it was a revelation.

  The visitor did not need to say another word, Laura turned, Antoine, it’s for you! Laura grabbed her jacket, slipped on her shoes and by the time Antoine, shocked by this unexpected visit, tried to react – Wait! – she had disappeared, her panicked footsteps echoing on the stairs. Antoine leaned into the stairwell, called her name, saw her hand sliding along the banister to the ground floor. He wondered where she had gone and felt a sudden pang of jealousy, then he turned, remembering the reason for her flight.

  He stalked angrily into the apartment.

  Émilie did not seem in the least embarrassed.

  “Mind if I sit down?” she said.

  Then, to justify the request, she added:

  “I’m pregnant.”

  The blood drained from Antoine’s face. Émilie talked for a long time about “their night together”, it was horribly embarrassing. She described their poignant reu
nion, the sudden, almost visceral surge of desire they had felt and, for her at least, “pleasure unlike anything she had ever known . . .” She could not speak for Antoine, “but me, well, I haven’t slept a wink since that night, I fell in love with you all over again the moment I saw you, I think I’ve always been in love with you, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself,” etc. Antoine could not believe his ears. The situation was so preposterous that, had he not suspected the potential consequences and the implications of her performance, he would have laughed.

  “It was just . . .”

  He stopped, fumbling for words. The doctor in him was screaming something he did not want to say aloud. He had to force himself to ask:

  “But who’s to say . . . that I was the one who . . .? Well, you know what I mean . . .”

  Émilie had a little couplet prepared. She set her handbag down at her feet and crossed her legs.

  “I can hardly be pregnant by my . . . well, by Jérôme. He’s been away for the past four months.”

  “But you could be pregnant by someone else!”

  “Yeah, that’s right, why don’t you just call me a slut while you’re at it?”

  Émilie was shocked by his remark, she had obviously never imagined that such a question might arise. Antoine was forced to apologise:

  “That’s not what I was trying . . .”

  He stopped and calculated, and was staggered by the result: it had been thirteen weeks since what Émilie had insisted on calling “our night together”.

  Bluntly, a legal termination was impossible.

  Everything was suddenly clear: she had waited until it was out of the question before coming to seek him out.

  “Of course I did, Antoine! I don’t want an abortion, it’s just not right. Besides, my parents . . .”

  “I don’t give a damn about your parents.”

  “Well I do, and I’m the one who’s pregnant!”

  Antoine wondered how much it would take to change her mind. Could he pay her off?

  “And you’re the father,” she said, lowering her eyes in a gesture learned from the television.