The Red Notebook (4 page)

Laurent smiled. The message sounded like an imperious summons from his mistress. But it was nothing of the sort – just a message from his fifteen-year-old daughter. Feisty, very pretty and, according to her mother, ‘appallingly manipulative’, Chloé had taken her parents’ separation in her stride. ‘I think it’s perfectly reasonable,’ she had told her father from the great height of her twelve years, ‘but I don’t want to lose out.’

‘I’m sorry? I’m not sure I understand.’

‘I want double pocket money.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Laurent again.

‘As I’m going to live with Maman, I’d like a cat.’

That time Laurent had not said ‘I’m sorry’ again. Instead he had sat down on the velour sofa and taken a long look at this scrap of womanhood, a blend apparently of his and Claire’s
genes. There must have been some kind of mutation. As a child he would never have had that much nerve, and neither would Claire.

‘There’s a white female kitten for sale in the next-door apartment block,’ Claire had told her a few weeks later.

‘I don’t want a white female kitten, I want a male. A big one. A Maine Coon.’

Claire had told Laurent about this demand, referring frequently to ‘your daughter’.

Now Chloé lived with her mother and an enormous Maine Coon.

‘What are you going to call it, darling?’ Claire and Laurent had asked her.

‘Putin,’ Chloé had replied slowly, smiling for added effect.

‘No!’ cried Claire. ‘You can’t call your cat Putin.’ But her words made no difference.

Putin never left Chloé’s room except to go to his food bowl or litter tray. He refused to let anyone other than Chloé stroke him, and would stride disdainfully across the living room to sharpen his claws on the sofa under the horrified eye of Claire, before going back to his room to await the return of his mistress.

Laurent typed back:

All right, my love. I’ll be there. And I’ll make pot-au-feu. But less of the ‘brainy bookwhizz’.

Lots of love

The moment he’d sent it, he reflected that he had probably never actually said ‘no’ to her. He took out his folding card table from behind the bookcase and resumed the task he had abandoned the night before. He put the bag on the green baize and took all the items out, laying them down at random. There was a tiny pocket in the lining where he found two unused Métro tickets and
a dry-cleaning chit. Thursday’s date was ticked, and the word ‘dress’ encircled. He checked the diary. It was obviously the ticket for the strappy dress, but it was just a generic ticket with no logo or address.

What was she like, this Laure who enjoyed having lunch in the garden, was frightened of red ants, dreamt she was making love to her pet which had been transformed into a man, and had a signed Patrick Modiano?

She was an enigma. It was like looking at someone through a fogged-up window. Her face was like one encountered in a dream, whose features dissolve as soon as you try to recall them.

‘She’s probably some old slag.’

The sentence had dropped like a fly into a bowl of milk, and Laurent rolled his eyes. He was lunching at the Jean-Bart with his friend Pascal Masselou, considered his ‘best friend’ since adolescence. The years had rolled by. Did Pascal still merit the appellation? He certainly didn’t have any competition for the title. But in fact the two men had little in common now. Their family situation was the same though; they were both divorced. But apart from that, everything that had bound them together had been left behind in the past. Messing about together in class, fantasising about supposedly inaccessible girls, giggling and shared secrets, beers in the bar, then university degrees all seemed light years away from the adults they had become. They had kept their relationship going like two poker players who continue late into the night, shuffling their cards and emptying their glasses long after the others have left the table and gone to bed. Laurent had told him about the bag, wanting to believe for a moment that Pascal would share his fascination.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because you don’t know who she is and you never will,’ replied Pascal, chewing his entrecôte. ‘All you have is the bag and her first name, no address and, most importantly, no photos. When I go after a woman, I know who she is, everything about
her: what she looks like, how old she is, what we have in common, what she does, the colour of her eyes and hair, height, weight …’

Since his divorce Pascal had discovered dating sites on the web. Usually he signed up to them under various pseudonyms. He was spreading himself about in the cyber jungle of the lonely hearts ads and had several times tried to convince Laurent to join him. He used ‘SeniorExec’ on Meetic and Attractive World – and the more evocative, not to say grotesque, ‘Shivers’, ‘Jimmy’, ‘Magnum’ and ‘TheBest’ on respectively: Adultery.com, Infidelity.fr, AshleyMadison.com, Adopt-a-bloke.com. Available for no-strings intimacy evenings and weekends, he was also in the market for ‘serious’ relationships, thereby easing his conscience.

‘I’m making the most of it,’ he liked to say, with a satisfied smile.

It seemed to Laurent that Pascal had been seduced by the very worst that the Western world offered, managing his love life, or, not to put too fine a point on it, his sex life, like the product manager of a small business. At a previous lunch, he had shown Laurent the relevant files on his laptop. In one click, Pascal had made three folders appear, filled with photos of women. ‘Stock’ for the women he had already slept with, ‘In progress’ for those he’d had a date with, ‘Prospective’ for the women he was aiming to date soon.

‘Seriously? You haven’t really made folders …’

‘Of course I have,’ Pascal said, irritated. ‘And within each folder I’ve put them into categories: nymphomaniacs, shy, teases, frigid …’

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t show me that,’ Laurent had protested.

Pascal had shrugged and closed his laptop. He considered Laurent hopelessly old-fashioned, still believing in the chance encounter, the smile exchanged across a café terrace, or the
conversation about a book that led on to something else. Laurent, on the other hand, considered that Pascal had become his own pimp, posting photos of himself worthy of a
GQ
fashion shoot: smiling, face on, a full-length shot, shirt open, grey jacket slung over one shoulder; or else bare-chested in swimming trunks in a shot taken five years ago on a Corsican beach. He had ticked the answers to questions like ‘What would you say are your best qualities?’ or ‘What sort of relationship are you looking for – a: serious, b: just friends, c: open?’

Now Pascal was updating Laurent on how his life was going. His son had had a scooter accident, and his daughter wasn’t speaking to him, ever since her friend’s older sister had shown her a photo of the guy she was flirting with on the net and it turned out to be … Pascal. Laurent had decided not to take Pascal up to his flat to show him the bag. Before the lunch, that had been his intention but obviously it would be a mistake. He didn’t want Pascal looking over all the items from the bag, and he wanted even less to hear his rude comments: women’s nonsense, you’re wasting your time, why don’t you throw it all in the bin? You want to meet someone? Create a profile on one of the sites.

‘And how’s Dominique?’

‘Yes, she’s very well, thank you,’ replied Laurent quietly.

‘I heard her this morning on the radio; her analysis was spot on! She’s an intelligent, good-looking woman – you’re lucky to have her.’ And as he finished up his béarnaise, Pascal concluded, ‘You’re made for each other.’

Laurent did not react. He had to admit that his friend was right. Without an identity card, or any photos, the woman with the red notebook would remain a mystery, and in all probability her things would soon be consigned to lost property.

A garden. Very much like the one of her childhood home. Only, not quite the same. In this one, there was a sort of rockery right at the bottom by the little brick wall. If she concentrated, she could even hear the water running over the stones. She had the distinct impression that a fat Siamese cat was sleeping in the sun on her bare feet. Even though it seemed unlikely, she was certain of it: she was in the garden. The feeling of the grass against her skin was so real. The cat sleeping at her feet that she couldn’t see could only be Sarbacane.

Her parents were there too. Somewhere near the table under the big tree where they ate lunch in summer. Her father would go to the market in the square and bring back oysters and spider crabs. He would open the oysters himself while her mother cooked the crabs in a court bouillon with bay leaves. Their shells went bright red. And when you squeezed lemon juice over the membrane of an oyster, it shrank back. That shows it’s fresh, her father used to say.

It was almost time for lunch, at some point in the early eighties, and the clocks had stopped ticking then. The last thirty years had fallen away. Laure had only dreamt she had become an adolescent and then a grown-up, that she had a job and a flat and service charges to pay. The very idea of a little girl paying service charges! At that age, the only problems you should be
tackling were sums and spellings: past participles with
avoir
agree with the direct object when it comes before the verb. Why, though? Because they do. Yes, but why? Honestly, don’t ask stupid questions, that’s just the way it is, full stop; you just have to learn it; we’ve had enough of your questions, Laure.

She had dreamt every encounter, every winding road that had led her to the silence of the Ateliers Gardhier. She had dreamt she would one day meet Xavier Valadier. I’m a photo-journalist, I take pictures in war zones. That must be very dangerous … Yes, it can be, he smiled. That gentle, sad smile and the two dimples that appeared with it had enchanted her. Just like his eyes, which must have seen too much death around the world. She had dreamt too his portfolio with its pictures of veiled Afghan women, children in the rubble of Chechnya, Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. And the one of Xavier posing beside Ahmed Shah Massoud. That name: Ahmed Shah Massoud, pronounced in an Arabic accent with the tongue rolling against the incisors. The whole thing was just a dream.

Just as it was five years later, when the telephone rang in the apartment at twenty past seven in the morning and the voice of a woman from the foreign ministry came down the line. That embarrassed, hesitant voice with a note of fear in it. The tone of voice that told Laure that her life was about to collapse. Like those ice sheets weighing several tons which break off icebergs with the first thaw and slide into the frozen waters of the Antarctic. The voice said: Something has happened to your husband in Iraq, something serious, very serious … There was a long silence before Laure asked, Is he dead … Is that what you’re saying? Then a shorter silence before the two words, Yes, Madame, were spoken.

Xavier was there in the garden too; she was sure she could
hear his voice over by the tree. He was talking to her father. Her mother was in the kitchen and Sarbacane would be weaving between her legs trying to pick up stray bits of crab. Everything about this summer afternoon was so real, and yet the house had long since been sold and everyone was dead. Sarbacane the cat was buried at the bottom of the garden by the brick wall, in the same spot as the strange water feature which had never existed. Laure’s parents were in Montparnasse cemetery and Xavier’s ashes had been scattered very early one blustery morning at Cap de la Hague.

The sounds she could hear suddenly bore no relation to those of the garden. Two female voices were exchanging opinions on the latest episodes of an American TV series. They were fully agreed on the lead actor’s charms. One of them kept raving about his silver hair and commanding voice. That’s what I call a real man! she exclaimed. No, it was definitely not the early eighties any more. The voices came closer. Baulieu says she should come out of it soon. Has any family been in to see her? A tall, skinny boy with short dyed-blond hair turned up last night in a complete flap, replied the other voice. He was a bit camp – well, more than a bit. He stayed until the end of visiting hours, said she’s his sister, but they don’t have the same surname.

William, Laure wanted to say. That was William. But no sound came out of her mouth. Nothing. And without meaning to, she headed back to the garden. The spider crabs were ready and her mother was calling her to fetch the white wine. She got up off the grass and went into the kitchen. She felt the cold floor tiles under her bare feet and when she opened the fridge, she saw her father had set two bottles of Pouilly-Fuissé to chill.

At this time of year there weren’t many people sitting outside the café. Laurent chose a table right at the front, that’s to say, just set back from the pavement. He settled down under one of the gas heaters which were dotted around the terrace to keep customers warm. Black jacket, white shirt, Levi’s and a blue scarf Claire had given him ten years ago; everything exactly as Chloé had asked. It was almost six o’clock. He ordered an espresso and passed the time studying the people around him. There was a group of men who had left work early and were sipping beers. They looked tired but were forcing themselves to laugh as they exchanged work anecdotes. And there was a woman on her own, a few tables away, apparently absorbed in her e-reader. Laurent tilted his chair imperceptibly and leant towards her. With this device an entire library could be downloaded and carried about in a handbag. Would the printed book hold out against that marvel of technology? In spite of the success of Le Cahier Rouge, Laurent somehow doubted it.

Black bag over her shoulder, faded jeans, studded belt, high-heeled light suede ankle boots – a source of discord with her mother – her favourite sky-blue jacket, and a polo neck, black this time, Chloé was in her habitual outfit that nevertheless took her half an hour to choose each morning, according to Claire. She was slightly ahead of her friends who were standing at
the end of the street, in front of the lycée, the oldest of them smoking. She came over to the table, dumped her bag down, and sat. ‘So, Mr Bookseller, sold many books?’