The two of them went inside and Nora called Sylvain. It rang three times before going to voice mail. Clearly Sylvain didn’t want to answer her call. Nora felt a touch of regret: obviously her ex-lover didn’t want to take the risk of having any contact with her.
“It’s gone to voice mail,” she said to Inès, sounding disappointed.
“I’m going to call Milo,” Inès declared.
She took her BlackBerry, dialed Milo’s number, and held it up to her ear. She heard it ring once, twice...and then the voice mail clicked on before the third ring.
“He’s declined the call!” she exclaimed, shocked.
“Like father, like son,” thought Nora to herself, mortified for her daughter. Had Tiphaine told Milo, and now he was furious with her, and consequently with Inès? She knew that her daughter had a crush on the boy and was annoyed with her for interfering—even without meaning to—in her love life. She looked at Inès, perplexed, even as she realized she wasn’t going to be able to put off the inevitable hostilities for much longer.
“All right, I’ll call the police,” she said.
Chapter 42
After explaining the reasons for her call and briefly describing their family situation, Nora was told by the duty officer that if she considered this lack of news to be worrying or unusual, she should go down to the local police station to report Gérard’s disappearance. She put down the phone and told her daughter what she was going to do. Inès’s opinion was that they’d wasted quite enough time already and needed to get moving right away.
“Stay here with Nassim, I’ll go on my own,” Nora said.
Inès tried to protest but her mother cut her off: she didn’t want to worry her son by telling him of their concerns. Inès agreed. So Nora went alone down to the police station. As she drove, she practiced out loud what she was going to say. What she would tell the police and what she would keep quiet about. What she supposedly did know and what she couldn’t possibly know. The interview was going to be very stressful, and she already felt a deep anxiety that put her nerves on edge. After the night she’d had, she had been hoping for a few hours of respite. On the other hand, she was relieved she had managed to persuade Inès to stay behind with Nassim: she’d have been even more terrified at lying in front of her children.
When she drew up to the police station she made a superhuman effort to control her nerves. She couldn’t put a foot wrong. Her statement had to be watertight, and she had to make it with the confidence of someone whose conscience was clear. Which was absolutely not the case. She glanced in the rearview mirror to check her appearance, arranging her features into a mask of concern about her husband’s disappearance, but erasing all other traces of anxiety. She climbed out of the car and walked the short distance to the station with a quick, nervous step. She entered the building and went straight to the reception desk, where she was asked why she had come.
“I haven’t heard anything from my husband since yesterday” was all she said.
She was told to take a seat and wait, and that someone would be along to speak with her very soon. Some twenty minutes later she was led into a large room furnished with three desks. She sat down opposite a police officer who invited her to speak and took down her statement.
The facts were straightforward: Gérard Depardieu, her husband, from whom she had recently separated, had shown no sign of life since the previous day, even though it was his week to have the children. According to his secretary, Mélanie, he’d left the office around five thirty in the afternoon. Mélanie had agreed to fetch their son from school and to stay with him and his older sister at the house until he returned. Just before 8 p.m., Nora had received a visit from her neighbors’ son, who told her that Gérard Depardieu had called in on them in the late afternoon, which surprised her, since she couldn’t imagine what reason he might have to want to see them. It wasn’t until she phoned the children to wish them good night, as she did every evening, that she learned that her husband hadn’t returned home. He wasn’t answering his cell phone, and no one had seen or heard from him since.
The officer asked her a few questions about Gérard’s routine and their relationship since they had split up. Was this a familiar pattern of behavior? Nora said that he often came home late from work, but that vanishing for an entire night wasn’t like him at all.
“Do you consider this disappearance to be of an alarming nature and that an offense may have been committed that might have put him in harm’s way?” the man asked, as if he were reciting a text by heart, which in fact he was.
Nora looked at the officer with a confused expression. She had the terrifying sensation that he could see right into her soul. Had an offense been committed that might have put Gérard Depardieu in harm’s way? The image of his body buried under three feet of compost flashed into her mind and she could do nothing to chase the memory away. For goodness’ sake, not now! She felt her heart beating faster and faster, her mouth grew dry, her stomach was in knots. She swallowed hard and the image faded.
“I have no idea,” she said at last. “All I know is that my husband hasn’t been seen since yesterday, which is very unusual.”
“Your husband or your ex-husband?”
“We don’t live together anymore, but we’re still married.”
The agent looked at her for a moment, as if trying to assess the level of enmity she felt for Gérard. Nora couldn’t hold his gaze. As she turned her head to the window, she was already cursing herself for her weakness.
“Well, we’d better get going with the search. I’ll need three recent photos of Monsieur”—he glanced down at the statement he had just taken—“Gérard Depardieu, his address and yours, and the details of anyone who might have been in contact with him: friends, colleagues, family. And I’ll also need the name and address of your neighbors, the ones he went to see yesterday.”
Nora nodded. She gave him what she could, apart from the photographs—she’d removed the picture of Gérard from her wallet weeks ago. The officer dictated the email address so she could send the pictures from her computer at home and they could begin their inquiry as soon as possible. She also gave him Tiphaine and Sylvain Geniot’s details. As she uttered their names, Nora felt a squirm of remorse. An insistent twinge in her gut that, she already knew, would never leave her.
She clung to the memory of her phone call to Sylvain, which he’d declined to answer. This was his way of imposing distance, of not even doing her the favor of bestowing a few words on her. Their story had died almost before it had even been born, before it had had time to blossom. Had anything actually happened between them? Or had Nora—so eager for romance and passion that she had believed that what was actually no more than a fling was real love, love at first sight—imagined the whole thing? How on earth had she been dumb enough to believe in such a mirage at the age of forty-four, when even teenagers didn’t believe in such a thing anymore? Oh, Nora, you fool! What were you thinking?
Filled with anger and resentment, ashamed of having let herself be fooled, and no less ashamed of having found in revenge the only alibi to justify what she was doing, she hung her head.
Chapter 43
Inès didn’t understand what was going on. Her heart sank as she kept tapping away on Facebook, trying to find some trace of Milo. He hadn’t posted anything for three days or reacted to anything she’d posted. What was going on? Whenever they saw each other there was such ease in their interaction that it felt completely natural and right. She felt good in his company and she knew—yes, she knew!—that he felt the same. And then, for no reason at all, he had become conspicuous by his absence and indifference.Conspicuouswas the word—he was always there in her thoughts, her dreams, and her aspirations. Since the first evening they had spent together, and even more so since their first kiss, her heart beat faster whenever she thought of him, with an airy cadence that gave rhythm to her days, the gallop of emotional excitement that so intoxicated her, she found herself constantly dreaming of distant and unfamiliar places.
Though she refused to admit it, Inès was falling in love.
Why was he not answering her calls or responding to her messages? What was wrong? She hadn’t dreamed it—the way he looked at her, their complicity, their closeness, the kiss...It had all happened!
