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Back The Martins Save as PDF
Contents (99)
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  93. EPILOGUE
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‘I can’t. We stopped talking a long time ago. I can’t even remember when our last conversation was.’

‘Is that why she went to Boston?’

‘Probably. It was all very sudden.’

‘…’

TWO SISTERS

Valérie was born just over a year after Stéphanie. Quite soon, though, it became almost impossible to tell which was the elder of the two. They shared everything, the same hobbies and the same friends, to the point where they were often described as inseparable. They went to see Michael Jackson in June 1988 at the Parc des Princes, and The Cure at the National Music Festival in Place de la République in 1990. One girl’s memories bled into the other’s; sometimes they weren’t sure who had done what, so closely connected were their lives. This was the first movement of an idyllic relationship.

It was hard to pinpoint exactly when things began to change. The poison of rivalry gradually seeped between the two siblings. Maybe it was caused by a boy who preferred one of them to the other. Could a look from some Theo or Leo really have destroyed such an intensely close sisterhood? No, it was absurd. What then? Well, there was the skiing accident. But it seemed crazy to imagine that all their tensions could have stemmed from that. Even so, it was a theory that Valérie no longer dismissed. Without doubt, there had been a before and an after that fall.

The two sisters had been having fun together on the slopes during the February school holidays. They weren’t sleeping much, since they would keep talking with their friends in the dorm long after the lights went out. So fatigue probably played a role in what happened. In the afternoons, they were allowed to go skiing without the rest of the group. After all, they were fifteen or sixteen. They loved stopping at the top of the mountain and lying on deckchairs outside the piste-side bar. Both girls were very sporty, but they also enjoyed doing nothing sometimes, basking in the sun that seemed so close up there. Behind their sunglasses, they watched the older boys, both of them hoping they wouldn’t be considered too young. Those moments were as close to pure happiness as they’d ever felt.