I thought about that all through the meal, between each mouthful. I wondered how I was going to deal with this overdraft at the bank, with it not being authorized. I was adding everything up in my head: Three daily specials, plus two children’s meals, plus five drinks. I remember saying to myself: Thank goodness they’re driving, there won’t be any wine. Philippe Toussaint still gave me nothing. All three of us lived on my salary. I had to count every centime.
I also remember that they said to me: “You’re so young, at what age did you have Catherine?” They didn’t know that Léonine was called Léonine. And I remember Léo dipping her pizza dough into the egg yolk. She said, “A poke in the eye for you!” And she laughed.
And I remember thinking to myself: That’s it, she’s a big girl now, she has a real friend. My first friend, it took a train strike for me to meet her at the age of twenty-four.
I was saying, “Yes . . . no . . . oh . . . ah . . . O.K. . . . that’s wonderful,” while gazing now and then at the Caussins’ beautiful blue eyes, but I wasn’t listening to them. I was finding it hard to tear my eyes away from Léo. And I was counting: Three daily specials, plus two children’s meals, plus five drinks.
Léo punctuated her sentences with laughter. She’d just lost two teeth. Her smile was like a piano abandoned in an attic. I’d done her hair in two braids, more practical for traveling.
Before leaving the restaurant, she made the paper napkins vanish. I would have loved her to make the bill vanish. I paid by check, quaking with fear. Thinking that if it bounced, I would die of shame. It’s strange, I presume that all of Malgrange knew that my husband was cheating on me, but people’s looks in Grand-Rue didn’t bother me. On the other hand, if it had been known that I wrote bouncing checks, I would never have left the house again.
We made our way back to the barrier. Léo got into the Caussins’ car, in the back, next to Anaïs. She almost forgot her doudou; she’d hidden it in my handbag so Anaïs wouldn’t know she needed it for the journey. I made her take some Cocculine because she got carsick and there were three hundred and forty-eight kilometers to be covered. I slipped the tube in her pocket for the return journey.
They would be arriving late afternoon, they would call me when they did.
During the afternoon, while tidying Léo’s things, I found the list I’d written a fortnight earlier so I wouldn’t forget anything when packing her suitcase.
Pocket money, 2 swimming suits, 7 undershirts, 7 pairs of underwear, sandals, sneakers (riding boots supplied), sun cream, hat, sunglasses, 3 dresses, 2 dungarees, 2 shorts, 3 trousers, 5 T-shirts (sheets and towels supplied), 2 swimming towels, 3 comics, mild + anti-lice shampoo, toothbrush, strawberry toothpaste, 1 warm sweater and 1 cardigan for evening + rain cape + 1 pen and sketchbook. Disposable camera + magician’s kit.
Doudou.
Close to 9 P.M., Léo phoned me, overexcited, everything was REALLY great. When she’d arrived at the camp, she’d seen the really cute ponies, she’d given them some bread and carrots, which was really cool, the weather was really lovely, the bedrooms were really pretty, there were two bunk beds in each room, Anaïs would sleep in the bottom bed and she in the top. After eating she’d done some magic tricks, everyone had really laughed. The supervisors were really nice, there was one who really looked like me. No, I couldn’t hand her over to Daddy, he’d gone for a ride. “Love you, Mommy, big kiss. Big kiss to Daddy.”
After hanging up, I went out into my little patch of garden. I saw a Barbie swimming on her back in the plastic swimming pool. The water had turned green. I emptied it out. The water ran along the rose bushes. I would fill it again the following week, when Léo would be back home.
42.
Love is when you meet someone who gives you news about yourself.
Julien Seul came to pick me up from the hospital. We drove in silence. He left for Marseilles immediately after dropping me off outside my house. Detective Seul told me he’d be back soon. He took my right hand and placed a kiss on it. It was the second one since we’ve known each other.
I returned to my cemetery with a prescription for tonic and vitamin D. And test results that were good. Eliane was waiting for me at the door. In the house, Elvis, Gaston, and Nono were also waiting for me. Gaston’s wife had prepared a meal for me that just needed heating up. They gently teased me because I had passed out at the sight of a dead body, and “for the keeper of a cemetery, that really takes the cake!”
I asked for news of the dead man like one asks for news of a retired colleague. The body of the “unknown biker” was taken to Mâcon. No one knew who he was. His bike wasn’t registered, and it was a standard model from which the serial number had been removed. Probably a stolen bike. The police had issued a description.
Nono showed me the article in the Journal de Saône-et-Loire, headlined: “Cursed bend.”
It’s been described as a tragic accident in the very place that Reine Ducha met her death in 1982. The biker hadn’t fastened his helmet and was riding at high speed. He was disfigured. Hence the impossibility of taking a photograph for identification, and using an Identikit picture instead.
I look at the Identikit, which has been sketched. Philippe Toussaint is unrecognizable. In the caption it says, “Man of around fifty-five years old, light skin, brown hair, blue eyes, 1.88m, no tattoos or distinguishing features. No jewelry. White
