Claire looked up at him and he gave her a chaste kiss.
“It smells good,” he said.
She pointed to the hot oven.
“A guinea hen with chestnuts, I didn’t do anything unusual.”
“That’s my favorite dish.”
“I know.”
She took his hand and pressed it between hers.
“Your day wasn’t too hard?”
“Apart from lasting thirty-six hours, not too.”
“I heard on the radio that there was a murder?”
Sebag thought a moment about what he was going to say.
“A pretty ordinary case . . . A drama of . . . jealousy.”
He’d avoided the painful word “adultery,” so why wasn’t he able to prevent himself from immediately adding:
“It ends that way, sometimes.”
Claire’s lips tensed and her blue eyes clouded over, becoming a sad green.
“Most of the time things go differently. I know that it’s the first cause of divorce, but it nonetheless sometimes happens that love is stronger and triumphs over jealousy and suffering . . .”
Gilles just nodded.
“Is Léo there?”
“In his room, on his computer, as usual.”
“Do I have time to take a shower?”
Clair sniffed and smiled.
“You have not only the time, but also the duty!”
Gilles gently freed his hand from hers and fled into the bedroom. On the bed, the quilt cover was still the same one as the day before: You and Me, Today, Tomorrow, Forever. The sheet retained the shape of a body where his wife usually slept on it. His pillow lay on top of the quilt and was creased. After a difficult and partly sleepless night, Claire had probably taken a nap in the early afternoon, her nose thrust into the pillowcase still imbued with his smell.
He went into the adjoining bathroom, threw his dirty clothes into the laundry hamper, and stepped into the shower. He began by letting the hot water flow over his tired body. Then he abruptly turned the lever in the other direction. The stream of icy water stunned him. His breathing stopped, he groaned, shivered, then shrieked. His breathing gradually became more regular, the cold became bearable. The body could adapt to anything. The mind ought to be able to do the same.
He was drying himself off when Claire came to press herself against his cool skin. She ran her hand over his face and stopped at the bump on his forehead.
“Did you hit yourself?”
He recalled his dialogue with the emergency medic.
“Yes, I . . . I chased down a little drug dealer this morning, and the heel of his shoe hit me on the forehead when I tackled him.”
“You’re not hurt any other way?”
“Apparently not.”
“I don’t like it when your work becomes dangerous. I don’t want to lose you . . .”
“I don’t either . . . I don’t want to lose myself.”
He’d tried to make a joke, but realized that his remark was double-edged. Just like his wife’s.
Claire stood on tiptoe and opened her mouth. They kissed for a long time. Sebag was sorry he’d eaten the eel with aioli, even though he knew his wife was in no position to complain. When their lips separated, she thanked him for coming home. For her and for the children.
“We’re spending Christmas together as a family, and then I’m going to my parents’ place. You can think about it. But give us some time. You can decide afterward what you want to do.”
As in the kitchen a few minutes earlier, Gilles just nodded. He knew that he was prepared to do anything to try to accept, but he was in no hurry to reassure his wife. A petty punishment, perhaps, but he had a right to inflict it.
“And . . . What about him, does he know that I know?”
Silently, she acquiesced.
“What did you tell him?”
She bit her lip.
“That you had read his messages and that I’d confessed everything to you.”
“Does his wife know?”
Claire frowned.
“No. Why would she?”
“He might have told her.”
“Why would he do that?”
“So he could stop lying, for example.”
“The affair is over, we live four hundred kilometers apart, and we’ll never see each other again. She has never suspected anything and probably never will. He won’t have to lie to her anymore, why do you think he would hurt her by telling her everything?”
He almost told her that he wouldn’t allow their couple to be the only one to suffer, but succeeded in controlling himself. Deep down, he clearly sensed that unhappiness can’t be cured by another unhappiness. Seeing his somber face, Claire suddenly got worried.
“You’re not going to tell her, are you?”
Gilles looked her straight in the eye. Claire’s concern was like a balm.
“Probably not.”
“Probably?”
“Does anyone ever know what he might be capable of in a moment of . . .”
He hesitated; he was afraid of being too melodramatic. Then he decided the term was justified:
“Of despair.”
Claire dug her white canines deeper into her soft lip.
“Don’t ever do that, please.”
For a moment he thought his wife’s sharp reaction came from the word he’d used. His expression hardened.
“Are you afraid for him?” he said coldly.
She put her hands on his stubbly cheeks.
“No, Gilles, I’m afraid for you. Really. That’s not the kind of person you are, I know that afterward you’d feel terrible about it.”
“So what kind of person am I? The nice fall guy, the understanding cuckold?”
Gilles hadn’t planned to get angry like this. He’d come home full of good intentions but rage had overcome him. A tear slipped from Claire’s eye. In that pearl he found the strength not to go any further, and to keep to himself all the smutty questions that were banging around in his head. He took his wife’s hands and pulled them away from his cheeks. Then he went on in a tone that was firm but less severe:
“I don’t want you to contact him again. Ever. No e-mails, no text messages, nothing at all. I can’t erase him from your memory but he has to disappear from your life, from our life. Forever.”
“I’ve already told him not to contact me again.”
“Did you tell him that in an SMS?
Claire bowed her head.
“I called him.”
She immediately looked up.
“I thought that was better, firmer and more definitive.”
“And what did he reply?”
“That it would be difficult but that it was preferable for everyone. Then I erased his number from my contacts.”
“And will it be difficult for you, too?”
“No doubt. But this affair is over, it should never have happened. I want to do everything I can to save our marriage, our family, I’m ready to do anything to win you back.”
He put his hand on Claire’s shoulder. She tilted her head to put her cheek on his hand.
“I want to trust you, Claire. But so far as he’s concerned, I’m going to be straight with you: If I learn that he has tried to contact you, even once, I’ll tell his wife everything. You tell him that. To warn him, you can contact him again. Just once.”
Gilles slowly pulled away and then headed for the bedroom closet, which he opened wide. He drew a long breath. He had to get dressed. If only by changing his clothes he could change his mood.
“What do you want me to wear this evening?”
“I like your navy blue shirt with your white slacks.”
“A tie?”
“Why not?”
She came over and chose a t
ie herself. A yellow one with a diamond pattern in sky-blue and brown.
“It’ll go very well with your shirt.”
The evening went off without a hitch. Sebag managed to fool everyone and even to smile and joke with Séverine and Léo. After his second drink, he decided it wasn’t so hard to pretend, and that it even lent one a certain serenity. He recalled the days back when the kids were little and he sat on the floor with them after he got home from work. It took only a few seconds for all his job worries to fade away.
How he would have liked to go back there, to Séverine with her little curls and smiles, to Léo’s pure joy, his eyes full of pride as he looked at his father. And the total confidence that he then had in his wife.
The guinea hen with chestnuts turned out to be excellent, as it did every year. During the whole evening, Claire was never far away, and took his hand or touched him every time she could. Maintaining contact to keep him with them in the joy of the instant, to prevent him from escaping to the dark regions of the recent past or to sad nostalgia for older times. After dessert—a chocolate parfait—they gave themselves over to the pleasure of the traditional gift-opening ceremony. The only flaw in the scene was that Claire had really bought him too many gifts this year.
Far too many.
Shortly after midnight, they were alone again in their bedroom. They undressed in silence and slipped between the sheets. Claire’s body touched his. Her belly against his side. She laid her hand on her husband’s chest and caressed it gently. He turned over on his side, and held her to him. His hand rested on her soft shoulder.
“I love you, Claire, I love you so much . . .”
He caressed her shoulder, then her neck. Then his hand went up to her cheek. Claire pressed her lips to his mouth and they embraced with as much passion as despair, combining saliva and tears in a single kiss. The salty taste turned both of them on.
They made love furiously.
As if it were the first time.
Or the last.
CHAPTER 12
The light they’d forgotten to turn off on the terrace haloed their room with calming shadows. Claire was drowsing, half-asleep, lost between the soothing of her senses and a dull uneasiness that tormented her body. The intensity of the sex had troubled her. Too many emotions were mixed up in it. Passion, fears, hope, anger, and also a bit of madness; a desire for possession in Gilles, a sense of guilt in her.
The body lying at her side turned toward her. The breathing was short, as if held back, the muscles tense. The wind was moving tentacular shadows on the walls. The moment of escape was over, unhappiness was returning. Fear was boring into the pit of her stomach. She remained stretched out on her back, refusing to turn over toward her husband. Above all, she didn’t want to encourage him, she was too afraid of what was going to come. Terrible questions, necessarily terrible ones.
She heard the mouth next to her open and stop breathing. The silence thickened around them. Nothing came out of those lips. Claire regained hope.
Not for long.
“And . . . he . . . was he a . . . a good lay?”
Claire closed her eyes. Her teeth bit into her lip without her knowing it. She had to pay the price. It was probably better this way. Her answer slipped out like a murmur:
“I don’t know what a good lay is.”
A ridiculous evasion. Gilles wouldn’t give up.
“Did he give you pleasure?”
A sigh, a moan, a plaint.
“Yes.”
“Every time?”
A gasp, a sob, a strangled scream.
“Yes.”
“Did he fuck better than I do?”
Her body stiffened further in response to the bruising words. She concentrated on her breathing to blunt the shock. She counted to ten before reopening her eyes. She turned toward Gilles, looking for help in his eyes. There she found neither tenderness nor love—pain masked everything—and felt lost.
How could she keep her promise to be sincere, to tell him everything, to confess everything, when the truth would add pain to his sorrow?
Simon was no more skilled than Gilles, but he had explored her mature woman’s body and revealed new paths to her. Paths toward pleasure that probably hadn’t existed before, and that Gilles had given up searching for. An absurd comparison occurred to her. The first summer following their arrival in the department of Pyrénées-Orientales, they had played tourist and visited many, many villages, sites, chapels, and chateaus. Then as the months went by, they started filtering their destinations, giving priority to places they knew they liked and thus closing themselves off from any new adventures. Sex with Gilles had resembled that: assured pleasure, safety, trust, and sweet tranquility. But Claire’s intimate landscapes had changed with age, they had grown richer. Sex with Simon had followed new paths, it had had the perfume of uncertainty, of turmoil and adventure. Pleasure had experienced caprices, failures, and beautiful discoveries. Afterward, Claire had been able to gradually guide her husband toward these new sensations and their conjugal relations had been embellished by them.
How could she tell him that without dealing the man she loved another painful blow?
Gilles was still waiting. Claire noticed that she had once again ceased to breathe. She caught her breath, she had found an answer. Neither more false nor more true than a diplomatic formula.
“Not better. Differently.”
She felt tears welling up in her eyes and a cowardly relief invaded her. She suspected Gilles of needing her tears. They calmed him, reassured him more than her words of love. She seized his chin and forced him to look her in the eyes.
“You don’t understand that that’s not the issue. I was not looking for better or worse, I needed something different. That’s all. I love you, Gilles. I’ve never loved anyone but you!”
“That’s not what you told me the other morning.”
Claire bit her tongue, hoping to make the tears flow that were stagnating in her eyes.
“Please don’t play the one who doesn’t want to understand. I remember very well what I said.”
Claire was bluffing. Like a nightmare, the memory of her confessions had faded as the hours passed.
“I . . . had feelings for Simon, it’s true. But . . . they were never in any way comparable to what I feel for you . . .”
She remained evasive. She’d never succeeded in putting into words what she’d felt with Simon. By being too precise now, she was in danger of lying. To Gilles and to herself.
“In his message, he calls you ‘my princess.’”
Claire ignored his interruption.
“No doubt there are degrees in love, everything depends on what you mean by that word. But I told you and I’ll tell you again as often as you want: you’re the love of my life, I want to live with you and grow old with you.”
“Then why?”
“You already asked me that question.”
“And I’ll probably ask you again.”
Claire thought for a few moments before answering:
“Maybe for that reason . . . Because I thought that we would always be together and sometimes that idea scared me.”
The music of a song by Renaud came back to her. Not one of the best written but one of the most moving, perhaps precisely because of its awkwardness and its sincerity. She began to hum the melody, and then the words as her memories returned.
After all, you don’t care
You knew that life’s disgusting
That love lasts forever
And that sometimes scares us
It was by taking a breath and feeling salty words on her lips that she realized that she was finally weeping.
You told me what you didn’t like
Was lying
That it eats you away
And that you are dying
But it’s
the truth, I find it sad to cry
And I cry
Gilles came closer and drank her tears as much as her words. Between two sobs, she exhaled the refrain:
Don’t throw me away
Don’t live without me
Don’t throw me away
Or throw yourself with me
When she awoke, she was alone under the quilt. She remembered that she had heard Gilles get up long before dawn. He’d been restlessly moving around in the bed for a long time before that. He could sleep no longer and he was probably struggling with his demons.
She was afraid.
She loved him. She really loved him. Madly.
And yet she’d cheated on him, she’d betrayed him. And she’d been happier than she’d ever been during that period. She hadn’t yet understood what had happened in her. And up to that point she hadn’t tried to find out.
The answer she’d given Gilles in the song rang true but it was probably incomplete.
With Simon, she’d felt herself slowly growing younger. She had rediscovered the carelessness of her youth, a little madness in a life that was too well-behaved. She’d given in. With delight.
Then she had managed things.
At the beginning of her adventure, she’d had to consult the websites of women’s magazines. She’d informed herself regarding the basic techniques of lying well, the pretexts that had to be invented for secret rendezvous and the art of afterward erasing every trace of a clandestine affair, on the body, on clothing, and in telephones. Her husband was a particularly perceptive cop, and she had been forced to redouble her attention.
Then, after several months had passed, she’d looked into crisis management: What should you do, what should you say, if your spouse discovers the cruel truth? Online, there was a plethora of articles on this subject, to the point that you’d think infidelity had become people’s favorite leisure activity. From her reading and rereading of advice columns, she had learned two things. First, that after the “revelation,” sincerity was required, the main objective being to restore trust. Then, you had to keep scabrous and unpleasant details from being divulged. Because although we are all aware that we may be seriously betrayed by our spouses—and are thus more or less prepared for that—few of us have anticipated the countless daily hypocrisies that accompany adultery, the micro-betrayals that will strike later on, sometimes from behind, through a word, a sentence, or a memory. It was a constant battle against dark ideas and gloomy questions.
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