They are dancing and Boris is holding her to him, caressingly. With every move, Louise’s top rides up, baring her skin, and Boris puts his hand on her hip to turn her. Thomas discovers a feeling of almost physical jealousy that he did not know he had in him. When “Crocodile Rock” comes to an end and Boris suggests they continue dancing to a less feverish number, Thomas intervenes.
“Do you mind?” he says with a smile. “I’m just going to borrow my wife from you for one dance.”
The tall blond man pretends to be amazed, but bows and kisses Louise’s hand before moving to the bar. Louise’s cheeks are pink from so much exertion. She relaxes indolently in his arms, rests her head on his shoulder.
“I never saw you as macho and possessive.”
“I have to admit it was beginning to bug me watching him maul you. I’d also had enough of you wriggling about like that, in a state of excitement.”
Louise steps back for a moment and gauges Thomas’s expression. He was not joking.
“Excitement?” she protests. “And you say I was wriggling?”
“Yes. And I can also say you smell of alcohol, my love.”
“You’re not my father.”
Louise stumbles, Thomas catches her and laughs.
“I’d just like to point out that you’re drunk. And I will concede that the guy’s not bad looking.”
“Better than that. He’s a really good dancer.”
“Granted. Still, he was holding you a bit too close for my liking.”
“Are you jealous?” She cocks her head.
“Yes, I’m jealous. Wasn’t your husband ever?”
“Romain trusted me completely.”
“It must just be me then, I know you can leave a man.”
“I’m certainly not going to leave you for some Boris Fern.”
“Oh? Is his name Fern?”
“If you put the TV on from time to time,” she replies, “you’d know that. Everyone knows him. But I’m not the sort to fall in love with a TV announcer. I prefer psychologists who bet at the races. Are you picking a fight? Is that what’s going on, you’re picking a fight?”
“I’d never pick a fight with you. It would be stupid, and inappropriate. But when I’m jealous, I’ll say so.”
“I love you, you idiot,” Louise whispers. “Anyway, you know that when I go out it’s to show off my ass.”
Thomas smiles, kisses the nape of her neck. In spite of everything, he doesn’t actually mind if she shows it off, that ass of hers.
KARL AND LEA
• •
KARL AND LEA HAVE PUT lots of gifts on the kitchen table.
Forty of them because this morning Anna is forty years old. Gifts in every shape, every color, wrapped in crepe paper, in velvet, in tissue paper. A real surprise. Anna plays the part accordingly.
“Open them, mommy, open them,” Karl and Lea cry while Stan cuts the little cake. She has already blown out the candles.
Anna opens them, alternating between large ones and tiny ones. In one, a stone painted bright red with a letter A in gold. In another, one of Lea’s drawings, which Anna unfolds carefully. A ginger cookie that she eats immediately. A salmon pink hair band. A red rose that she quickly puts in a glass. A queen of hearts, drawn by Karl … Anna wants to open a small one with a star design, but Karl and Lea protest, insisting she save it for the very end. A small glass for drinking tea. A plastic knight, “to defend her,” Lea explains …
One gift is different from all the others, smaller, more regular, more expensively wrapped too. She has seen it, she wants to put off the moment, but Stan nudges it toward her with one finger.
“Open it,” he says. “Happy birthday, my darling.”
Anna knows it is a piece of jewelry, probably a ring, probably gorgeous, probably priceless. She looks at her husband, shakes her head, her eyes shining.
“Thank you,” Anna breathes. “You shouldn’t have, Stan, you know very well why you shouldn’t have. I can’t accept it, you’re setting a trap for me. You shouldn’t do that.”
“Shush. It’s a ring, not a chain, not a padlock. I’m not buying you. You know that.”
“I’ll open your daddy’s present later, kids.”
Anna continues. So as not to disappoint Karl and Lea, she takes her time, but her high spirits have evaporated, every second suddenly weighs so heavily on her. Is this the last time they will celebrate her birthday as a family like this? In two months’ time, Karl will be eight. Can she ask him to celebrate that birthday without his father, then without her? Anna’s hands are shaking.
“The last present’s the most important,” the children cry. A scarlet envelope, inside, a sheet of white paper.
Lea has drawn a frieze around the margins, Karl has written on it in colored felt-tip pen.
The letter begins with “Lovely little mommy.” It is the most banal children’s letter, but every word cuts right through Anna. She reads it slowly, out loud at first, then quietly, ending in silence. When she has finished, she squeezes her children in her arms. There is a question in the letter. She replies with tears in her eyes: “Of course, my darlings, of course I’ll never leave you. You’re the loves of my life. The loves of my life.”
THOMAS AND JUDITH
• •
THE WIND BLOWS through Louise’s blond hair streaked with the white she now allows to grow in. It is a very mild winter day on the Normandy coast.
“Come and help us, mommy,” says Maud, “Judith and me are going to dig a hole down to the water.”
Thomas squints in the light. Louise is rolling on the sand with her daughters, all three of them wave. With every move Louise makes, Thomas feels a sense of wonder as he glimpses the cheeky little girl he never knew.
Judith runs over to him, she wants a waffle, she is the one who takes his hand and drags him over to the crepe stall. Because Thomas “saved her life,” the child thinks, by some mischievous inversion of logic, that he is now her property. A waffle with sugar.
“Thomas?” Judith asks when Maud and Louise join them. “How did you meet mommy?”
She does not look away: she wants to know. Her cheek is white with sugar, Thomas wipes it with a napkin. Maud is also listening closely.
“I’ll leave you to explain it,” says Louise. “Make sure you tell it properly. I’ll be right back. And can you order me a tea?”
Thomas tells them, in his own way. He tries to be accurate, talks about the first evening, the first exchange of e-mails, he even talks about the Galápagos iguana whose skeleton shrinks when there is not enough food. But Judith is not at all interested in the reptile.
“And did you fall in love with mommy right away?”
“I think I did,” Thomas smiles, before correcting himself. “I’m sure I did.”
“And did you know about daddy?”
“Yes,” Thomas replies, as frankly as the question was asked.
Louise is back, she takes his hand.
“You know, my darlings,” she says, “I’ve told you, there were already lots of things that weren’t right between daddy and me. We used to be very happy and the proof is that you’re both here, but we hadn’t been happy for a few years, even if it didn’t show. And then I met Thomas, and I really, really fell in love with him — in spite of his gray hair, I know — and everything felt so clear to me.”