Once she’d rolled the body up inside the tarp, she dragged it by the feet to the kitchen, then turned right into the dining room. She hauled it out through the glass door and onto the deck, then dragged it along the back of the house to the bay that protruded at the corner, far enough from the outside light to be plunged into shadow.
It was almost nightfall. Gérard’s body wasn’t exactly hidden, but it couldn’t be seen unless someone was really looking. It would do for the time being.
Wasting no time, Nora hurried back inside and into the kitchen, where she grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, a mop, a bottle of floor cleaner, and a bucket that she filled halfway up with hot water. She went back into the entryway. Just then her phone rang from inside her purse, which was sitting on the kitchen table. She started at the sound, her nerves on edge, swore under her breath, put down the cleaning equipment, and went back into the kitchen to rummage in her purse for the phone. It was Mélanie, of course. She answered, cutting short the secretary’s apologies, and promised she would be over as soon as she could.
She had never scrubbed a floor so thoroughly in her life.
Suppressing her nausea, she wiped up the blood, rubbed down the tiles and the grout, soaped, rinsed, and polished until there was not the slightest trace left of Gérard’s fall. Then she did the same on the stairs. When she had finished, she put away all the cleaning materials, took a quick look at herself in the mirror to check she was presentable, and hurried out of the house and into the car.
Ten minutes later she drew up outside her former home. She turned off the engine and took a few moments to compose herself. The hardest part was still to come. First, she was going to have to face her children without letting them see that anything was amiss, which, given her state, was going to be tricky. Then, after they went to bed, she was going to have to carry out the second part of her plan. She felt a wave of overwhelming weariness and had to force herself to control her despair. Now was not the moment to waver.
Mélanie greeted her with relief. It was already almost nine, and this unfortunate hiccup had made her late for dinner with some friends who had been expecting her an hour ago. The children were thrilled to see Nora, too. They bombarded her with questions about their father, asking her if she knew where he was or had heard from him.
Nora hugged them tight, feigning complete ignorance about everything, before shooing them off to pack their bags.
“We’re going back to your house?” Nassim asked, surprised. “How will we know when Papa gets back?”
“We’ll call him,” said Nora.
As she spoke she felt a cold sweat running down her entire body. Gérard’s phone! She’d left it in his jacket pocket. If it rang, it would draw attention to where his body lay like nothing else. How could she have forgotten about it? She tried to calm her rising panic, forced herself to think logically. If anyone called him before she got back, what was the risk if a neighbor heard it? Wasn’t the sound of a cell phone ringing so utterly banal today that it would arouse zero curiosity?
She had to hurry home to sort out this bothersome detail.
“Get a move on, you two,” she said, sounding flustered. “It’s late.”
“So?” said Inès with an insouciant shrug. “We don’t have school tomorrow, it’s Saturday.”
Nora eyed her daughter with a mixture of consternation and sadness. “Maybe so, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to get home,” she said testily. “I haven’t eaten yet, for one thing.”
“Fine, no need to get mad about it.”
Inès went up to her room to pack her stuff. Nora began pacing up and down, unable to stop thinking about the signal she’d left in Gérard’s pocket. If she’d wanted to tell the whole world she had hidden a body in the garden she couldn’t have done it better. She knew her husband: he was always getting calls, even in the evening, and if someone was trying to get ahold of him...her head began to fill with the most terrible scenarios: she imagined arriving back at her house and finding the street filled with police cars, blue lights flashing, a body being brought out on a stretcher, all the neighbors standing at their front doors observing the scene in horror.
And her driving up, the kids in the back seat with a barrage of questions, why are there cops outside our house, what are they doing, who’s that on the stretcher?
“Are you ready?” she called up to hurry things along.
“Are we coming back here to spend the weekend with Papa?” asked Inès from the top of the stairs.
Nora was about to say no, but she caught herself in time.
“I think so, yes. I’ll bring you back once he gets home. But it’s late now, so tonight you’ll stay with me.”
“Should we bring our backpacks?” asked Nassim.
“You might as well, you never know,” Nora replied, trying—not very well—to conceal her impatience.
At last they were ready to go.
“How will Papa know where we are?” Nassim asked as she opened the front door.
“Good point!” said Inès. “We should leave him a note so he doesn’t worry.”
“That’s enough!” said Nora, losing her temper and at the same time wondering how she could be so cynical. “He’s the one who’s let you down, and now you’re worrying about him?”
“Maman!” said Inès reproachfully. “He might have a very good excuse.”
“Your father always has a good excuse,” said Nora under her breath, thinking to herself that this time he’d surpassed himself.
