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Back The Martins Save as PDF
Contents (99)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. EPILOGUE
  94. 1
  95. 2
  96. 3
  97. 4
  98. 5
  99. 6

57

Sometimes it feels as though you have lived through several days in the space of twenty-four hours. That was exactly how I felt as I went to bed that night – as if I’d woken up on Tuesday and was falling asleep on Friday.

58

The next morning, opening my eyes and turning on my phone, I saw I’d received a message from Valérie: EVERYTHING IS BACK TO NORMAL. SORRY FOR THE END TO OUR EVENING. RUNNING LATE – I’LL TELL YOU MORE AFTER WORK. I reread this message several times. That first sentence intrigued me. What did ‘back to normal’ mean? That Patrick had calmed down? That their marital problems had been solved? I couldn’t find a path that would plausibly lead me through the labyrinth of those three enigmatic words. In any case, it struck me as good news for my book. If everything had calmed down, I would be able to go to their apartment again without being regarded as an intruder or an enemy. Then again, I had the impression that Valérie had written the message quickly, to reassure me. The situation might actually be more muddled than she wanted to admit. Or, worse, it was possible that she hadn’t even written this message herself. Maybe Patrick had murdered his whole family and taken his wife’s phone. This is a well-known tactic among murderers, as a way of buying time: they write texts, pretending to be their victims.

59

There is always a moment when you let yourself imagine the darkest possible version of a story. But let’s be honest: the way things were at this point, it was hard to know whether my book was about to turn into a Stephen King novel or something by Barbara Cartland.

60

As I waited to find out what would happen next (particularly the outcome of Patrick’s meeting wth Desjoyaux), I felt a bit lost. I could have spent the day writing down what I already knew, but it seemed to me that I ought to live through this story before I started telling it. I even thought it would be counterproductive to retreat into my shell now to transform acts into words. But what could I do today with the Martins? I had to let Madeleine prepare for our trip. In the end, I could think of only one course of action: meeting the famous Clément.

I sent him a message and he replied a few minutes later, in a break between two classes, I imagined. Lola must have told him about me because he immediately agreed to meet me that afternoon, in a café near their school. What was I going to say to him? I was supposed to find out if his intentions towards Lola were honourable. I was now beginning to understand what she was hoping to achieve. I was like an ambassador, there to ensure his legitimacy, to act as a sort of moral witness. But what could I actually do? Threaten him if he treated her badly? ‘I’m warning you, son, if you dump her after sleeping with her, I’ll write a very unflattering portrait of you in my book!’ That was, I think, more or less what Lola was hoping I would tell this kid.