I waited until I was back in my car before leafing through them. The article that caught my attention was a review of the play adapted from Perfume. Written by one of the students, it described the piece as “profoundly moving, with two intensely powerful performances by the leading actresses.” But I was more interested in the photographs. In the largest of the pictures, Vinca and Fanny were standing face-to-face. They looked almost like twins. I thought of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and of Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton, two faces of the same woman.

Vinca was herself onstage, but Fanny was completely transformed. I thought about the conversation I had had with her earlier that afternoon. A detail suddenly came back to me, and I knew that she had not told me everything.

Death and the Maiden

13

La Place de la Catastrophe

1.

7:00 p.m.

I left the lycée and headed back to La Fontonne Hospital. This time, I avoided the reception desk and went straight up to the cardiology unit. I had barely stepped out of the elevator when a nurse in pink scrubs called to me:

“Hey! You’re Annabelle Degalais’s son!”

Dark-skinned, with dreadlocks streaked with blond highlights and a thousand-watt smile, the young woman radiated joy in the bleak hospital corridor. She looked a little like Lauryn Hill when she was with the Fugees.

“I’m Sophia,” she said. “I know your mom well. Every time she comes to see us, she talks about you!”

“You must be confusing me with my brother Jérôme. He works for Doctors Without Borders.”

I was used to my mother’s panegyrics about my older brother and did not doubt that Jérôme deserved them. Besides, it’s impossible to compete with someone who spends every day saving lives in war-torn countries and disaster zones.

“No, no, you’re the one she talks about, the writer. She even got you to sign one of your books for me.”

“I’d be very surprised.”

But Sophia would not budge an inch.

“I’ve got the book in the call room. Come have a look. It’s right over there.”

Since she had piqued my curiosity, I followed her to the end of the corridor and into a long, narrow room. She showed me a copy of my most recent novel, A Few Days with You, and it was indeed inscribed For Sophia, hoping that this story will give you pleasure and make you think. Warm regards, Thomas Degalais. Except it was not my handwriting but my mother’s! A surreal image popped into my head of my mother trying to fake my signature to respond to readers’ requests.

“Have I signed many books for people here?”

“A dozen or so. A lot of people in the hospital read your books.”

I was intrigued by this discovery. I was clearly missing something.

“How long has my mother been coming here for treatment?”