He probably thought she was making a big mistake getting married.
Tonight she and Karl would go out for dinner and celebrate a year’s anniversary of being together. A long time in her book, if not in his. They’d also celebrate the fact that they were now engaged. Karl had wanted to set a date for the wedding, but she had said that could wait. One step at a time. Empty words, but he had taken them to heart. He was so sweet, and gorgeous with those deep blue eyes and that crooked smile. And successful to boot, at least the sort of success that means something in the world of academia. Most women would be green with envy.
Most of all, he worshipped her. There was nothing he wouldn’t do. He was patient and kind. And there, Maly thought, was the crux of the issue.
What was wrong with her? She was always picking men who were too nice, too pliant. Men who wanted to make her happy and almost did.
At the other end of the flat she heard the alarm go off. With a sigh, she walked back to the bedroom.
Anne Dufour tiptoed back into the bedroom to turn off the alarm. Jacques would not want it to go off today. There was a good chance he would wake up in a foul temper.
She closed the door quietly and on padded feet headed down to the kitchen: her favourite room in this house, which otherwise held little attraction for her. Most of what was here had come from her mother-in-law’s house. Little by little, Jacques had divested his mother of the pieces she had which he liked best. Anne didn’t know where her mother-in-law had found the things she had filled her flat with, to replace the ones her son had pilfered.
There was a great deal she didn’t know or at least pretended to ignore. She had lived like this for so long that she had almost convinced herself that this was normal enough, that all marriages had their share of nasty little secrets. Now her mother-in-law was dead. She’d died alone and frightened, with no one to love or comfort her.
She turned the electric kettle on and stood by the sink waiting for it to boil. It was getting light but the street was quiet still.
She watched the steam from the boiling water fog up the window. Gingerly, she touched her left hip. There’d be a bruise, but luckily no one would see it. Last time Margot had commented on the red mark on her arm and she’d had to lie. She could see Margot didn’t believe her. It was strange, lying to her best friend. But the alternative was worse.
She hardly saw Margot these days. It was too difficult, pretending that all was well, having to meet her probing gaze with a casual smile. And Jacques hated Margot. The feeling was quite mutual.
Last night she and Jacques had gone out for dinner. It was a celebration, Jacques said. He was in a particularly good mood, having been promoted to a position he’d coveted for months. It meant more money and more travel. The money made little difference to Anne: ever since the beginning of their marriage, Jacques had kept her on a tight leash, handing out money at the beginning of each week and demanding to know what it was being spent on. The travel meant he would be away for longer periods. For a start, the company wanted to send him to Shanghai and Beijing, to Seoul and on to Tokyo, to meet with clients. All in all he would be away for three weeks. He was being trusted with an important task, a sign that his bosses were pleased with his work.
She had been pleased for him. But she thought about the three weeks where she would be alone in the big house with the furniture she hadn’t picked and where she had never felt quite at home. She should have kept quiet, but she still hadn’t learned to keep her mouth shut.
‘It’s a long trip,’ she said. ‘Maybe I could join you somewhere along the way and we could spend a weekend together,’ she added, thinking that maybe it would please him that she should miss him.
The brutality of his response had shaken her.
‘It isn’t a fucking holiday,’ he’d said. In his eyes was a look of such hatred that she flinched. If he’d slapped her it would have hurt less.
She had stopped right there, not wanting to end the evening with a fight. Over dessert and on the way home he was sullen. They’d finished a bottle of red wine. Neither of them was drunk but she found his behaviour altered, strange to understand. When she tried to touch him, at home, he shoved her away. She lost her balance and fell against the corner of the dining table.
He’d gone to bed without saying a word. She’d debated whether to sleep in their son’s room but in the end she’d slid next to her husband. She hadn’t slept at all.
It had been an accident. But Margot wouldn’t see it that way.
The phone rang. Anne ran to pick it up, worried that it might wake Jacques. It was the policeman, Morel.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you but I wondered whether we might be able to have another chat with your husband sometime this week.’
‘He’s asleep right now,’ she said. She realized all of a sudden that she was whispering and she made an effort to speak up. ‘I can get him to give you a call when he wakes up.’
‘That would be great, thank you. We just have a couple of questions. We’ll try to keep it short.’
‘OK.’ She thought of the female officer who had visited and tears sprung to her eyes, which she quickly brushed away.
As she hung up, she felt Jacques’s hands around her hips. He pressed himself against her and she felt the hardness of his erection against her lower back. She tried not to show how much his hand hurt against her hip.
‘Who was that?’
‘The police. That man Morel. He has a few more questions to ask. He wants to know when he can come and talk to us.’
He laughed. ‘They probably just want to take another look at the house. I bet they don’t see many like ours in their daily rounds.’
She felt his hands move up her rib cage and find her breasts.
‘I’m sorry about last night,’ he said.
‘So am I.’
‘Come back to bed.’
She didn’t feel like it. She wanted him to get ready and go to work. But he wasn’t in a hurry this morning.
‘Come on, baby,’ Jacques said.
She closed her eyes. He was pinching her nipples a little too hard, but she didn’t say anything. Instead she turned towards him and let his hand move down her stomach.
‘OK,’ she said.
Morel was lying against Solange, his head resting in the crook of her arm while she ran her hand through his hair. The palm of his hand brushed against her nipples, followed the curve of her breasts. He was sweaty and sleepy, happily drained from lovemaking. Mildly triumphant, the way good sex can make you feel. Morel knew he could sleep like this, with her hand in his hair and the feel of her skin beneath his fingers.
For a moment, he dozed off. But then his thoughts turned to Mathilde, and he found himself wide awake again. He moved away from Solange and got up.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘Just to get a drink. I’ll be right back.’
He pulled on his trousers and tiptoed downstairs, hoping he wouldn’t run into Henri. But Solange’s husband had gone to bed hours ago. In the middle of the night like this the house seemed pointlessly grand, full of unvisited spaces.
In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of orange juice and got a glass of sparkling water for Solange, knowing she would want one. He drank the juice and headed back up the stairs with Solange’s drink.
When he lay down beside her she reached over and kissed his lips. She pressed her lips to his chest.
Morel closed his eyes and let out a contented sigh.
Ever since that time when he’d parked outside Mathilde’s home and seen her appear so close to him, he’d thought more frequently about her. Wondered whether to give her a call, make it casual and suggest they catch up over coffee. But she would wonder how he’d found her. There’d be nothing casual about his contacting her.
He’d seen Mathilde for the first time at a bus stop. Twenty-five years ago. She wasn’t waiting for a bus. She was doing her laces up. She had obviously been running. Her face was flushed and she’d loos
ened her hair. Thick and red and down to her waist, it was beautiful. She was small, with narrow, muscly legs. From the back she had seemed younger, so that when she turned, he found himself gaping at her profile. He wanted to see her face better and moved closer, pretending to look at the bus schedule. He stood next to her, squinting at the information above her head. When he finally looked at her he saw she wasn’t fooled for an instant. Her eyes were deep, of the darkest blue, the expression more informed than anything he’d been prepared for in that snippet of a woman.
He found out soon after that she was addicted to running. That she liked having someone around who could make her laugh and that her laughter was unrestrained. That she didn’t like her freckles and was self-conscious about her breasts, though the self-consciousness wore away quickly under his adoring gaze. That she could be sharp-tongued and unkind but also intensely loyal. He was slogging his way through his first year of mathematics, feeling trapped, knowing full well that he wasn’t going to make it, while she worked her way through an architecture degree with the same diligence she applied to her long-distance running. It didn’t take long for them to move in together. He took his cue from her, sitting down to his studies when she did, waiting for the moment when she’d be done so they could be together. Neither of them had much money, Morel had not wanted to rely on his parents and worked in a bookshop during the day and in a bar three nights a week to pay his way. In between studying and working they did a great deal of walking through the streets of Paris, stopping only when their feet grew sore for a cup of coffee in the nearest cafe.
Morel collected the things he found out about her like a person collects unusual shells and smooth pieces of green and white glass in the sand, storing these in a private box of treasures. Loving her revealed good things about himself. He found that he thrived in the burrowing closeness of their domesticity, that intimacy suited him.
And leaving that aside, the panting euphoria of first love! Wet tongues and breath and fingers, feeling and licking and groping, heading towards that delirious first fuck. The lead-up to it had made them both ache with anticipation – they were so incredibly ready, desperate for it – till finally they had given in one afternoon on his bedroom floor, his fingers bruising the flesh around her hips, her black tights hanging from one ankle as she held her legs high and wide around his body, her red hair spread across the carpet like a flood. Over the next twelve months they had lived in a state of permanent hunger, undressing each other at every opportunity, drunk with a sexual happiness they felt certain no one else could know.
Sleeping with Solange was delightful too, of course, but it was tempered by knowledge and experience. With Mathilde, Morel had known nothing except the moment. He and Mathilde had loved and lusted with blank, unwritten minds. Unselfconscious and free. After that, nothing could be taken out of context and lived as a thing apart from the rest.
He felt Solange’s hand on his thigh. She reached for his cock and laughed.
‘Again? My God, I don’t think I’ve ever felt you this hard.’
Solange bent her head towards him. He felt her nipples graze his chest and then his thighs. He raised his arms around his head and closed his eyes. He found in the midst of his pleasure that he could conjure up Mathilde, just as if she were the one doing this to him. When he came he gritted his teeth so he would not say her name and shatter everything.
TWENTY-THREE
The wind kept coming, in sudden gusts that shook the car before abating again. The sky was a swirling mass of clouds. Raindrops rolled up the windshield, leaving a trembling trail in their wake. Cars moved towards them on the opposite lane with their headlights on. Every once in a while, one of them would raise a wave of water and Morel would slow down and stare at the blindness ahead, waiting to regain his sight.
Lila yawned.
‘What crappy weather.’
Morel had picked her up from her flat early so that they could get on to the A11 before the morning commuter rush.
Now she inclined her seat and put her feet up on the dashboard. One look from Morel, though, and the feet came down. She sighed.
‘What’s this music we’re listening to?’ she said after a long pause.
‘Andrés Segovia. One of the most famous classical guitar players ever.’
He glanced at her.
‘You can change it if you want.’
‘Nope, it’s fine.’
She yawned again.
‘How long till we get there?’ she asked.
Morel looked at the odometer.
‘Less than two hours.’
‘Thanks.’
He shook his head. Lila looked at him.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. For a moment there I thought I was travelling with a five-year-old, that’s all.’
There was another pause while she tried to come up with something smart to say, followed by a big sigh.
‘So this Segovia? Is he still alive?’
‘No.’
Lila snorted. ‘Thought so.’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing.’
Halfway to Rennes Lila pleaded for a change of music. It was Fun Radio for the rest of the drive. When they reached the city they spent some time looking for a place where they could have an early lunch before driving the next stretch to the village.
Once they’d decided where to eat, Morel found a place to park and turned the ignition off. The sounds of a band whose name Morel didn’t know died out. It had been like listening to a pig being slaughtered, though Lila had declared it was one of her favourites. They would be touring Europe soon and she planned to go to their Paris concert.
Morel got out and stretched his legs. As he waited for Lila to get her things together and join him, he thought regretfully of the TGV train. The trip from Gare Montparnasse to Rennes was less than two hours. He could have worn headphones.
They found the house easily once they were there.
‘Obviously everyone must know everyone in a place this small,’ Lila said. She wore a black sleeveless Puffa jacket, jeans and boots. Still she shivered and rubbed her hands. ‘You wouldn’t think it was the middle of summer, would you?’
‘No.’ Morel looked at the sky. ‘It looks like a proper storm coming.’
‘Coming? What do you mean? It’s been stormy for the past three hours.’
For some reason, Charles Berg was nothing like what Morel had expected. The man who opened the door had the look of an athlete. He was strong and well built, with a chiselled jaw and piercing blue eyes.
Charles smiled at them, almost as though he’d been looking forward to their visit.
‘Make yourselves at home. I’ll get us some coffee.’
Inside they were led to a living and dining area that looked as though a hurricane had swept through it. There were books on the floor and clothes strewn across the room. A piece of half-eaten toast lay buttered side down in the middle of the floor. Morel stepped around it and walked to the sliding glass panels at the back of the house.
The mess inside did not take anything away from the loveliness of the view from this room into the garden. The glass-panelled walls revealed a vista of apple trees and rose bushes. A tree house and a tyre swing.
‘What a wonderful spot,’ Morel said. ‘A children’s paradise.’
‘I guess that’s the advantage of living in a place this small,’ Charles said. ‘The fact is you’d have to be a millionaire to own a house with a garden in Paris. And I think the kids are better off growing up in a place like this than in the big city.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Won’t you sit down?’
Morel and Lila looked for a place where they might sit and finally perched themselves on the edge of a sofa littered with crumbs.
‘Coffee? With sugar?’
They both replied yes to the first question and no to the second. Charles switched the coffee maker on.
‘Sorry about the mess. It isn’t usually this
bad,’ he said.
Lila gave Morel a look which he pretended not to see.
‘Please don’t apologize. It’s good of you to see us,’ Morel said.
‘Well, I’m happy to help.’ Charles handed two cups of coffee to them and pulled a dining-room chair over to where they sat. ‘If I can be of any help, that is. I’m not sure where I fit in.’
‘We’ll fill you in, then,’ Lila said.
Morel pushed his knee against Lila’s as a warning to behave herself.
‘You probably know that your mother called us, to tell us about Armand Le Bellec. She said she saw him at her house,’ Morel began.
‘Yes, that’s right. I was there, in fact.’
‘Did you see him?’
‘No. But he gave my daughter quite a fright. He was lurking in the bushes for some reason.’
‘Your mother says the two of you went to school together.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Were you close?’
Charles took a sip from his cup. ‘Not particularly. I mean, when we were kids we did occasionally spend time together. But later we went our separate ways.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
Charles made a show of thinking, and shook his head slowly. ‘I can’t really remember. It was while we were still at school.’
‘Did you two fall out?’
Charles smiled. His teeth were perfectly aligned. ‘Like I said, we were not that close. There was no reason to fall out.’
‘Did he come to your house at all?’
Charles seemed to hesitate, then he shook his head to indicate no.
‘So you have no idea where we might find him?’
‘None at all, I’m afraid. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.’
‘One last thing: would you happen to have a photo of Armand?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Charles said.
‘Are you sure? A class photo, perhaps?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m not very good at keeping that sort of thing.’
The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) Page 16