On the other side of the street, I go to the A.T.M. to withdraw money because it is the perfect observation point, and I see Sophie’s shock as she is stopped by the security guard. She laughs, but not for long. She has to go with him so he can check her purchases.
Sophie did not emerge from the supermarket for more than an hour. Two uniformed police officers turned up. I don’t know what happened. When she came out of Monoprix, she looked crushed. This time, she really will have to go and see a shrink. She has no choice.
December 5
Since September, there have been several auctions at Percy’s, but I can’t work out what determines whether or not Sophie goes. It seems completely unpredictable, because I don’t have the information that informs her decision. There was an auction last night at 9.00. I waited until 9.15 and, since Sophie seemed determined to spend the evening in front of the television, I decided to go myself.
There was a large crowd. The receptionist was greeting customers with a smile, distributing handsome glossy catalogues. She recognised me immediately and gave me a particularly winning smile which I returned, without insisting unduly. The sale was a long-drawn-out affair. I waited for at least an hour before popping out to the lobby where the receptionist was counting the catalogues that remained and handing them to the few stragglers.
We talked for a bit. I played my cards well. Her name is Andrée – a name I despise. She looks fatter standing up than she does behind the desk. Her perfume is just as cloying, if anything it was even more nauseating at close range. I told her a few jokes and made her laugh. I pretended I had to get back for the rest of the auction, but at the last moment, having already taken a couple of steps, I turned and asked if she would allow me to buy her a drink when the auction was over. She simpered pathetically, I could tell she was thrilled. For form’s sake, she pretended she would have a lot to do after the sale, but she did little to put me off. As it turned out, I only had to wait fifteen minutes. I hailed a taxi and took her to the grands boulevards. I remembered a bar opposite l’Olympia that had muted lighting and served cocktails and English beers, and where you can also eat. It was a painfully dull evening, but one that I am sure will prove fruitful in the future.
I feel sorry for the girl.
Last night I watched my lovebirds romping in bed, though Sophie’s heart didn’t seem to be in it. She probably has other things on her mind. I slept like a stone.
December 8
Sophie is wondering whether her computer might be the problem. She suspects that someone might have remote access, but doesn’t know how to find out. She created yet another e-mail account and this time she did not store the password on her computer. It took me six hours to hack in. The mailbox was empty. I changed the password. Now she is the one who cannot access it.
Vincent is visibly worried about her. Deep down, he’s a sensitive soul. He simply asked Sophie how things were going, but that was euphemistic. On the telephone to his mother, he raised the possibility that Sophie might be “depressive”. From what I could gather, his mother was sympathetic, which just goes to show what a hypocrite she is. She and Sophie cordially loathe each other.
December 9
Through a friend of her late mother she has vaguely kept in touch with, Sophie quickly managed to get an appointment to see a specialist. I don’t know what’s going on in that head of hers, but choosing a “behavioural therapist” seems dumb to me. Why didn’t she go for a decent psychiatrist? The sort of guy who’s bound to drive you insane. It’s as if she learned nothing from her mother. Instead, she visits a Doctor Brevet, a quack who, from what she has written to Valérie, offered her advice on how to “confirm the validity, the objective reality, of her fears”. So she has to keep lists of things, lists of dates, she has to note everything down. It promises to be exhausting.
That said, she is still keeping the whole thing secret from her husband, which is a good sign. For me. And what’s good for me is good for Sophie.
December 10
I’m really worried about something I heard them say last night: Vincent was talking about trying for a baby. Listening to them, it’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation. Sophie is reluctant. But I can tell from her voice that she wants to be persuaded. I don’t think she particularly wants a kid, I think she just wants something normal to happen for a change. In fact, it’s hard to say whether Vincent is being honest about the whole thing. I’ve been wondering whether he thinks Sophie’s depressive behaviour has something to do with her longing for a child. Pure psychobabble. I could tell him a thing or two about his wife.
December 11
A few days ago, I found out that Sophie has to go to Neuilly-sur-Seine this morning for some public relations event. There is my Sophie looking for a parking spot, driving round and round and finally finding a place. An hour later, the car is gone. This time, she didn’t go rushing to the police station, she went round in circles – on foot this time – and eventually found the car parked several streets away. This is not like her own neighbourhood, she does not recognise the landmarks. A nice little story to start off her new notebook.
December 12
I am not about to set down in the diary the unspeakable horrors I have to put up with from that fat bitch Andrée. She is just about becoming useful to me, but there are times when I can hardly bear to be in her presence.
This is what I’ve found out so far.
As a press officer, Sophie is responsible for certain P.R. campaigns, those related to particularly high-profile auctions, for example. The rest of the time, she works on “corporate communications”, ensuring the company’s “brand image” is “well positioned”.
Sophie has been working at Percy’s for two years. There are two of them in the department, Sophie and a man called Pencherat, who is Head of P.R. “pro tem”, according to Andrée. He’s a dipso. Andrée pulls comic faces when she describes him. Talks about the stink of wine on his breath. It’s a bit rich, coming from someone who uses perfume as a weapon, but never mind . . .
Sophie has a degree in economics. She got the job at Percy’s through a friend who has since left the company.
She and Vincent were married in 1999 at the town hall in the sixteenth arrondissement. May 13, to be precise. Andrée went to the reception. I was treated to a detailed description of the food I could well have done without, especially since she told me nothing about the other guests. All I can remember is that “the husband’s family are well off”. Not exactly helpful. And that Sophie hates her mother-in-law, and calls her a “poisonous bitch”.
Sophie is popular at Percy’s. Her superiors trust her. Although lately, rumour has it, her reliability has been called into question: she misses meetings, she lost a company chequebook, she damaged two company cars in recent weeks and she accidentally wiped a client file that was, so they said, critical. I can see what they mean.
Andrée describes her as friendly, approachable, very cheerful, and generally dependable. She is, it seems, something of an expert. Though recently she has not been very well (no shit . . .). She isn’t sleeping, she claims to have bouts of depression. She says she is seeing someone. To put it bluntly, she seems a little lost. And alone.
December 13
Everyone is rushing around trying to get ready for Christmas, and Sophie is no exception. This evening, she did some late-night shopping at F.N.A.C. The place was heaving! People pushing and shoving at the checkouts. You put down your plastic bag, bicker with the customer behind you, stumble and . . . when you get home and look in the bag, you discover that instead of Swordfishtrombones, there is a different Tom Waits C.D., Blue Valentine, and that you have a copy of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children but you can’t remember who you bought it for. And you can’t find the till receipt to take it back. So you write it down in your little notebook.
Sophie and Andrée mostly confine themselves to small talk, they are not what you would really call friends. Is the information I’ve managed to gather about S
ophie and Vincent really worth the excruciating time spent with this dumb bitch? Because it is pretty thin. Vincent is apparently working on a “major deal” at work, which is taking up most of his energy. Sophie is bored at Percy’s. Since her mother’s death, she increasingly misses her father, who lives in Seine-et-Marne. She wants to have children, but not yet. Vincent doesn’t like her friend Valérie. I think I’ll have to give up on the fat bitch and find myself a more useful source of information.
December 14
Sophie writes everything down, or almost everything. She sometimes wonders whether she is even remembering to note things down. Then she realises that she has written the same thing twice. Her arrest for shoplifting at Monoprix a month ago has left her badly shaken. The security guards took her into a windowless room and took turns trying to get her to sign a confession. From what she wrote to Valérie, they are utter bastards, but they’re good at their job. At harassing people. She did not really understand what they wanted. Then the police arrived. They were in a hurry. They did not pull their punches. She had the choice of being taken down to the station and referred to the magistrate’s court, or to admit to shoplifting and sign a statement: she signed. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Vincent, she simply couldn’t. The problem is, it has just happened again. This time it will be more difficult to hide. A bottle of perfume and a manicure kit were found in her bag. But Sophie was lucky. She was taken to the commissariat – it was action stations out there in the street – but released two hours later. She had to make up an excuse for her husband, who was waiting for her.
The following day, she lost her car again, and a number of other things.
Noting everything down is probably the best solution, but, as she writes, “I’m starting to get obsessive, even paranoid. I’m forever monitoring myself as though I am the enemy.”
December 15
My relationship with Andrée has reached a critical point, the one where I am supposed to suggest that we sleep together. Since that is out of the question, I feel a little awkward. I’ve already been out with her five times, we’ve done all sorts of tedious things, but I have stuck to my plan: never ask her about Sophie, avoid the subject of her work – the only thing that interests me – as far as possible. Luckily, Andrée is a chatterbox, she can be very indiscreet. She has told me lots of funny stories about Percy’s and I pretended to be interested. I laughed. I couldn’t stop her taking my hand. She brushed against me in a way I found infuriating.
Last night, we went to the cinema and then to a bar she knows near Montparnasse. She said hello to several of the regulars and I felt embarrassed to be in public with her. She babbled a lot and smiled as she introduced me to people. I realised she had brought me here to show me off, chuffed to be on the arm of someone who is obviously a “good catch”, since she’s no oil painting. I played along diffidently. I did the best I could. Andrée was in her element. We took a table together and she was more attentive than she has ever been. She held my hand all evening. After what I reckoned was a reasonable amount of time, I said I was a little tired. She told me she had had a “fabulous” evening. We took a taxi, and that was the point at which I realised things were going to turn sour. As soon as we were in the back seat, she brazenly pressed herself against me. She had had a bit too much to drink. Enough to put me in an awkward position. By the time we got to her place, I had been forced to accept her invitation to “come up for a nightcap”. I felt deeply uncomfortable. She kept smiling at me as though dealing with a painfully shy teenager and, needless to say, as soon as we got through the door, she stuck her tongue down my throat. I cannot describe how disgusted I felt. I thought about Sophie and that helped a little. Faced with her insistence (I should have been prepared, but I simply could not imagine myself in this situation), I told her that I “wasn’t ready”. Those were my very words, it was the first thing that popped into my head, and the only truthful thing I ever said to her. She gave me a strange look and I managed to smile self-consciously. And I said: “It’s difficult for me . . . I’ll tell you about it sometime.” She assumed I was hinting at some sexual confession and felt reassured. She’s the kind of woman who likes to play the nursemaid with men. She squeezed my hand fiercely as if to say “Don’t worry, it’ll be alright”. I made the most of the awkward atmosphere to get the hell out of there, deliberately making it seem as though I were running away.
I walked along the river and tried to choke back my anger.
December 21
The day before yesterday, Sophie came home with an important project for the management committee. It took two days, working late into the night, to finish. Sitting at my observation post into the early hours, I followed her progress; I watched as she wrote, deleted, corrected, did more research then rewrote and re-edited. Two long nights. At least nine hours by my calculation. Sophie is a hard worker, I’ll give her that. And then this morning – wham! – she can’t find the C.D. on which she burned the file, even though she remembers putting it in her bag last night. She rushed over to her computer, and when she started it up – by now she was already late – she found that the original file had also disappeared. She spent an hour doing everything she could think of, searching, scanning, she was almost in tears. In the end, she had to go to the management committee meeting without the work she had been entrusted to do. I suspect the meeting didn’t go too well.
It could not have happened on a worse day: today is Vincent’s mother’s birthday. From the look on his face – he loves his mother, that boy – I worked out that Sophie was refusing to go. Vincent was pacing up and down the living room, and screaming. I can’t wait to listen to the recording. Eventually she gave in and agreed to go with him. But of course when they were leaving she couldn’t find the present (it’s been here in my room since last night, I will put it back in a few days): Vincent hit the roof again. By the time they left the apartment, they were running very late. Moody. When they’d gone I went upstairs to change the dose of her depressant.
December 23
I’m extremely worried about Sophie. This time she really lost it. Spectacularly.
On Thursday night, when they came back from the birthday party, I could tell things had gone badly (Sophie has always hated her mother-in-law, and there’s no reason why things should be any different at the moment). They had a blazing row. I think Sophie may even have insisted on leaving before the party was over. His mother’s birthday! Given that Sophie had already lost his mother’s present, she can ill afford to make such a scene.
I don’t know exactly what was said: most of the argument must have taken place in the car on the way home. By the time they got back to the apartment, they were hurling insults. I have no way of working out exactly what happened, but I feel sure the old bag was condescending and cantankerous. I’m with Sophie – the woman is a nightmare. She is constantly making insinuations, she’s manipulative and hypocritical. At least that is what Sophie screamed at Vincent before he furiously slammed every single door in the apartment and insisted on sleeping on the sofa. Personally, I found the whole episode a little histrionic, but there’s no accounting for taste. Sophie was absolutely livid. This is the point at which she should have had her breakdown. The sleeping pills plunged her into a coma but, inexplicably, this morning she was up and about. Staggering, but on her feet. She and Vincent did not exchange a word. They ate breakfast separately and before Sophie was overwhelmed by sleep again, she had a cup of tea and checked her e-mails. Vincent slammed the door as he left. Sophie contacted Valérie on MSN Messenger and told her about the dream she had had in which she pushed her mother-in-law down the stairs of her suburban house; the old woman tumbled down the steps, slamming against the wall and the banister, and ending up sprawled at the bottom, her spine snapped. Stone dead. The image was so real it jolted Sophie awake. “It was weird, it felt so unbelievably real.” Sophie did not go in to work immediately. She did not have the energy to do anything. Being a good friend, Valérie chatted to her online for an
hour after which Sophie decided to go shopping so that Vincent would not come home to find there was nothing for dinner. This is what she told Valérie: a quick trip to the supermarket, a cup of strong tea, then a shower and she would still be able to go to the office, if only to show her face. I intervened between stages one and two, slipping in to take care of the tea.
Sophie did not get to the office at all. She spent the whole day drifting in and out of sleep and cannot remember a single thing she did. In the late afternoon, Vincent got a call from his father: Mme Duguet had had an accident, she had fallen down a flight of stairs. Sophie was almost hysterical when she heard the news.
December 26
The funeral was this morning. I watched the lovebirds drive off with their suitcases last night. They looked devastated. They must have gone to see Vincent’s father, to keep him company. Sophie is a changed woman. She is shattered, her face is pale and gaunt, she moves like an automaton and looks as though at any moment she might collapse.
In her defence, it must be hard to celebrate Christmas with the body of the old bag laid out upstairs. I crept up and put the present to Vincent’s late mother among Sophie’s things. It should make for a touching surprise when they get back from the funeral.
January 6, 2001
Sophie is deeply depressed. Since the death of her mother-in-law, she feels panicked about the future. When I heard that there was an investigation, I was worried. Thankfully, it was only routine. The case was quickly classified as an accidental death. But we know better, Sophie and I. Now I need to increase my surveillance. It is vital that nothing should escape my notice, otherwise Sophie herself might escape. My every sense is heightened, I am razor-sharp. Sometimes I feel myself quiver.
Blood Wedding Page 13
