a holiday camp, you could lose them all in one go.

Léonine called her primary-school teacher “Mademoiselle Claire.” When gentle Claire Berthier, bent over some exercise books, looked up and saw me coming into the classroom, she turned pale. We hadn’t seen each other since my daughter’s disappearance. My presence made her feel awkward, she clearly wished that the ground would swallow her up.

The death of a child is a strain on grown-ups, adults, other people, neighbors, storekeepers. They avert their eyes, avoid you, change sidewalks. When a child dies, for many people, the parents die, too.

We exchanged polite greetings. I didn’t give her a chance to say anything. I immediately took out the photo of Geneviève Magnan, the one of her in the ridiculous hat.

“Do you know her?”

Surprised by my question, the teacher frowned and stared at the photo, replying that it didn’t ring any bells. I persisted:

“I think she worked here.”

“Here? You mean at the school?”

“Yes, in a neighboring class.”

Claire Berthier turned her lovely green eyes back to the photo and studied Geneviève Magnan’s face for longer.

“Ah . . . I think I remember, she was in Madame Piolet’s class, with the large nursery groups . . . She arrived in the middle of the year. Didn’t stay very long here.”

“Thank you.”

“Why are you showing me this photo? Are you looking for this lady?”

“No, no, I know where she lives.”

Claire smiled at me the way one smiles at a madwoman, a sick woman, a widow, an orphan, an alcoholic, an idiot, a mother-who’s-lost-her-child.

“Goodbye, and thank you.”

59.

It’s when the tree is lying down that

one gets the measure of its stature.

I put Irène Fayolle’s journal into the drawer of my bedside table. I read the passages that refer to me randomly, never in chronological order. She came to my cemetery occasionally, between 2009 and 2015, to visit Gabriel’s tomb. Years during which she made notes on the weather, on Gabriel, the surrounding tombs, the potted flowers, and me.

Julien had slipped colored paper between the pages where his mother talks about “the cemetery lady” in her journal. Like flowers lain over the lines in which she speaks of me. It instantly reminded me of Stefan Zweig’s Letter from an Unknown Woman.

January 3rd, 2010

Today I noticed that the cemetery lady had been crying . . . 

October 6th, 2009

As I was leaving the cemetery, I came across the lady who looks after it, she was smiling, she was accompanied by a gravedigger, a dog, and two cats . . . 

July 6th, 2013

The cemetery lady often cleans the tombs, she’s not obliged to . . . 

September 28th, 2015

I came across the cemetery lady, she smiled at me but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere . . . 

April 7th, 2011

I just learned that the cemetery lady’s husband disappeared . . . 

September 3rd, 2012

The cemetery lady’s house was locked and the shutters closed. I asked a gravedigger why, he told me that on Christmas Day and September 3rd, the keeper didn’t want to see anyone. They’re the only days of the year when she’s replaced, apart from the summer holidays . . . 

June 7th, 2014

Apparently, the cemetery lady records the speeches made for the deceased in notebooks . . . 

August 10th, 2013

When buying some flowers, I learned that the cemetery lady was on holiday in Marseilles. I could have walked past her . . . 

When I read beyond the lines concerning me, when I open the journal at places where there are no colored markers slipped in by Julien, I feel as if I’m entering Irène’s bedroom and poking around under her mattress. Like her son when he started looking for Philippe Toussaint. As for me, it’s Gabriel Prudent I’m looking for when I go out of bounds.

There are some words I can’t make out. Irène wrote as illegibly as doctors do prescriptions. With her ballpoint pen, she produced a tiny, spidery scrawl.

After their night of love in the Blue Room, Gabriel Prudent and Irène Fayolle didn’t leave the hotel together.

They had to vacate the room by midday. Gabriel called reception to say that he would be staying another twenty-four hours. He stroked Irène with his fingertips, murmuring, between drags:

“I need to sober up after all that alcohol, and, even more, I need to sober up after you before leaving here.”

She took it badly. It was as if he’d said: “I need to rid myself of you before leaving here.”

She got up, had a shower, got dressed. Since she’d been married, she’d never spent the night away from home. When she came out of the bathroom, Gabriel had fallen asleep. In the ashtray, acrid smoke was rising from a badly stubbed-out butt.

She opened the minibar for a bottle of water. Gabriel opened his eyes and watched her drinking from the bottle. She already had her coat on.

“Stay a little longer.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. He loved this gesture. Her skin, her eyes, her hair gathered in a black elastic band.

“I’ve been away since yesterday morning. I was supposed to deliver flowers to Aix and return straight after . . . I’m sure my husband has already reported my disappearance.”

“You’re not tempted to disappear?”

“No.”

“Come and live with me.”

“I’m married and I have a son.”

“Get divorced and bring your son with you. I get along pretty well with children.”

“One can’t get divorced just like that, with the flick of a magic wand. You seem to think everything is easy.”

“But everything is easy.”

“I don’t want to go to my husband’s funeral. You abandoned your wife and she died of it.”

“You’re becoming unpleasant.”

She looked for her handbag. Checked her van keys were inside.

“No, realistic. One doesn’t just abandon people like that. If you find it easy to pack in everything and start again elsewhere, without worrying about others, about their grief, well . . . that’s fine.”

“Each to their own life.”

“No. The lives of others matter, too.”

“I know, I spend mine defending those lives in various courts.”

“It’s the lives of strangers that you defend. The lives of people you don’t know. Not your own life. Not the lives of your loved ones. It’s almost . . . easy.”

“We’re already at the reproaches stage. After a single night of love. We

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