A little later that same day—it was early afternoon, and Milo was munching his way through a bowl of cereal—Tiphaine caught sight of her new neighbors for the first time. Her attention was drawn by a moving van maneuvering in the street outside. She turned away from Milo and his breakfast to stand by the window and watch the comings and goings.
It wasn’t hard to spot the only two women among the movers. One, despite her obvious efforts to look younger, must have been around forty, while the other couldn’t have been more than fifteen, despite her obvious efforts to look older. Both were in T-shirt and jeans, although the girl’s top was a good deal shorter and tighter than the woman’s. There was no doubt of their relationship: mother and daughter, moving together in lockstep, picking up and carrying inside the boxes they were able to lift.
Instinctively, Tiphaine looked for a man who wasn’t wearing overalls with the moving company’s logo. There wasn’t one that she could see.
“Cute ass!”
Tiphaine started in surprise. Milo was standing behind her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, turning away from the window.
“Same as you: checking them out.”
“Have you finished your breakfast?”
Milo nodded.
“Then get down to some work.”
The young man gave a sigh and ambled nonchalantly back upstairs. Tiphaine waited till he’d left the room before returning to her observation post.
The girl was cute. She had the poise of a teenager enjoying her body’s metamorphosis, relieved that her interminable childhood was at last coming to an end. One of those girls who is delighted to discover the advantages of her budding curves. Who understands instinctively that real life is finally about to begin.
Apples don’t fall far from the tree—the mother was also very pretty. She was tall, slim, and elegant, with all the assets of her North African heritage: olive skin; long, dark hair; and deep, black eyes. She exuded the self-confidence of an older woman aware that she had not yet reached her sell-by date. She walked back and forth between the truck and the house, never slowing her pace, telling the movers which rooms they were to store the boxes and furniture in, and encouraging her daughter to keep going. She looked nice, Tiphaine thought.
It wasn’t a surprise that there were people moving in next door. It was five months since the owner, Madame Coustenoble, had died, and her heirs had immediately made it clear that they were going to rent out the property. Tiphaine knew the house like the back of her hand; she and Sylvain had lived in it for several years, until the tragedy that had destroyed their lives. The “events,” as she and Sylvain had taken to calling that terrible period, which they’d agreed, quite openly, never to speak about again. After the “events,” they had obtained custody of Milo, the son of their next-door neighbors, David and Laetitia. They had been good friends, who had shared everything: Friday-night drinks, barbecues, laughter, secrets.
And then horror.
Milo was seven when Tiphaine and Sylvain became his legal guardians. In this capacity, it was their duty to draw up a full inventory of the boy’s assets, which included his parents’ house. As his guardians, it was their responsibility to manage it, and within a few months they had made the decision to live there. This was, as they saw it, the obvious solution: moving out of the house in which they’d suffered the most appalling tragedy a parent can ever experience. The house where their little boy, the love of their lives, the quintessence of joy, had been born. Maxime. Every corner held some memory—a look, a smile, the smell of him. His voice, too, the way its echo resounded incessantly within walls that stood like informers—walls that ensure you never forget. Ever. Intolerable grief that borders on madness.
Maxime.
An angel who had not been allotted the time to spread his wings.
Their fallen angel.
They gave notice to their landlady, Madame Coustenoble, who, rather than trying to find new, reliable tenants, decided to move back in and end her days there. A project she successfully accomplished eight years later.
After her death, her heirs did some building work on the house: while she had been alive the old lady had always rejected every proposal that Sylvain, who was an architect, had ever put forward. There were builders onsite for over a month, and then Tiphaine had watched the round of visits of potential tenants. For the last couple of weeks things had gone quiet, and she’d begun to suspect they would soon be meeting their new neighbors.
The mystery of who they might be was a source of deep anxiety for her; it was the first time since the “events” that a new family was going to move in, take over her former home, and make it their own, relegating the history of the previous tenants definitively to the past. And, despite the suffering she had experienced every day for eight long years, there was nothing Tiphaine dreaded more.
Of course she was apprehensive about the kind of people they’d be. A couple of retirees who’d complain that the wind was blowing smoke over the hedge every time she and Sylvain had a cookout in the backyard? Or, worse, a young married couple like she and Sylvain had been when they’d moved into the house seventeen years earlier? This possibility terrified her: the thought of two young people, madly in love, turning up thinking the house would be the perfect place to start a family. She couldn’t bear to have to listen to the wail of a baby or the chuckles of a toddler coming from their backyard. As long as Madame Coustenoble was alive, she’d been safe from this unbearable possibility. But now the old lady was gone.
Lost in thought, Tiphaine gave a brief, mirthless smile: so these were her famous new neighbors. Two women, assuming that the absence of a man wasn’t due to a demanding job or a debilitating illness. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been: a young, lovestruck couple with a beaming toddler, an insufferable picture of happiness whose cloying whiff would waft over the hedge and up her nose. And the cherry on the cake: the presence of a pretty young lady with a captivating smile seemed a good omen. Milo had noticed the teenager right away, and his spontaneous reaction, however indelicate, at least indicated curiosity on the part of a young man who was by nature withdrawn and solitary, and rarely inclined to seek out the company of people his own age.
All in all, the arrival of these two women was a pleasant surprise. Or at any rate the least bad eventuality. Which was about as much as Tiphaine dared hope for nowadays.
Chapter 3
The move went smoothly, and by four o’clock that afternoon Nora had signed the movers’ invoice and handed them a well-earned tip. She went inside and shut the front door behind her. She took a few deep breaths, then went from room to room checking the boxes and furniture stacked up in each one. There was still so much to do, but the hardest part was behind her: Gérard, her ex-husband, had kept his word and not shown up today. She’d been afraid he’d insist on being there, under the pretext of wanting to help—that really would have been the last straw—or to make sure she was taking only the furniture that was rightfully hers.
In fact, Nora had taken very few things with her from their marital home: a sideboard, a sofa bed, two bookshelves, an armchair, and her personal stuff. She hadn’t overdone it. But given it was she who had left, she didn’t feel entitled to clear out the house.
The last few weeks had been awful. Splitting up always is, especially after eighteen years together. But she’d made up her mind, and for all Gérard’s remonstrations, wheedling, and intimidation he hadn’t been able to get her to change it. She didn’t love him anymore. The grinding routine of daily life and the constant squabbling had triumphed over love. Standard stuff.
Gérard had clung on, convinced he’d be able to rekindle their former intimacy. But her heart wasn’t in it, and she couldn’t keep up the charade, though she knew a lot about pretending. They had been the tight-knit couple that the years hadn’t managed to unravel. She was the wife who understood her husband’s regular absences—always on business, of course, but all the same!—and who was quite content with being a stay-at-home mother. But the reality was that Gérard and she had drifted apart, he absorbed by his work, she by all the things she did of which he managed to remain quite oblivious. Mutual lack of understanding set in, and they were arguing more and more about things that were both important and trivial. Even though he spent so little time at home, he still tried to control his wife’s schedule and who she saw, and was constantly weighing in with opinions about what she’d gotten up to during the day. His distrust was pathological: as far as he was concerned, in this dangerous world there was trouble brewing on every street corner. His work was no doubt a big part of the reason he thought that way.
