Blood Wedding (17 page)

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.

Given recent events, Sophie can no longer think of confiding in Vincent. She is condemned to her solitude.

January 15

This morning, they set off for the country. It has been a long time since they went back to the Oise. I left Paris half an hour after them, overtook them on the
autoroute
and calmly waited for them at the slip road by the Senlis exit. Following them did not prove too difficult this time. They dropped into the estate agent, but re-emerged without the agent. They seemed to be heading to
a house I remembered them visiting in some godforsaken hole near Crépy-en-Valois. By the time I arrived, they weren’t there. For a moment, I thought I had lost them, but I saw their car parked in front of a gate a few kilometres away.

The house is vast and quite extraordinary. Very different from most of the places you get around here: a stone mansion with wooden balconies; the architecture is intricate, with hundreds of nooks and crannies. There is a disused barn they will probably convert into a garage, and a shed where the model husband will probably spend his weekends tinkering. The grounds are bordered by high stone walls, except at the northern boundary where part of the wall has collapsed. This is how I managed to get in, having left the motorbike on the edge of a patch of woodland behind the property. With a little cunning, I managed to find them. I watched them through my binoculars. Twenty minutes later, they were walking through the grounds, their arms around each other’s waists. They were whispering sweet nothings to each other. It was pathetic. As if anyone could overhear them in the desolate gardens of an empty mansion on the outskirts of a village that time seems to have forgotten. But maybe that’s what people call love. In spite of Vincent’s slightly mournful expression, they seemed good together, they looked happy. Especially Sophie. From time to time she pulled Vincent’s arm more tightly around her as though to remind him of her presence, her support. All the same, it was a little sad, the two of them traipsing through the grounds in the dead of winter.

When they went back into the house, I didn’t know what to do. I’m not familiar with the area yet, and I was beginning to worry that someone might walk past. You are never really alone in a place like this. It looks dead, but try to find a bit of peace and quiet
and before you know it you run into some farmer on his tractor, a hunter looking you up and down, a kid on a bicycle setting off to build a den in the woods. After a little while, since I hadn’t seen them come out again, I left the motorbike behind a low wall and crept closer to the house. All of a sudden I had a premonition. I raced round to the back of the house. By the time I got there, I was out of breath and had to wait until my heart had stopped hammering so I could listen for noises. Not a sound. I inched along the wall, taking care to watch where I placed my feet, until I came to a pair of shutters with the bottom slats missing. Stepping onto a stone curb, I hoisted myself up a little until I could peer inside. The kitchen. It was horribly old-fashioned, and would need a lot of expensive work. But my lovebirds had other things on their mind. Sophie was leaning against the carved stone sink, her dress hiked up to her hips; Vincent, with his trousers around his ankles, was conscientiously fucking her. Clearly his mother’s death has not left the lad completely at a loss. From my vantage point, I could only see his back and his buttocks which clenched as he pumped into her. It looked ridiculous. What was beautiful, on the other hand, was Sophie’s face. Her arms clasped around her husband’s neck as though carrying a basket, she was standing on tiptoe, her eyes closed, the pleasure so intense it transfigured her. A pretty face, so pale and taut, utterly absorbed as though in sleep. I managed to take a couple of decent photographs. Vincent speeded up his perfunctory in–out motions, his pale buttocks clenched faster, harder. I could tell from Sophie’s face that she was about to come. Her lips parted, her eyes flew wide and a passionate wail rose in her. It was magnificent. Exactly what I hope to see the day I kill her. Her head jerked back and she suddenly slumped onto Vincent’s shoulder, sinking her teeth into his jacket as she quivered.

Enjoy
the ride, my angel, make the most of it.

At that moment, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her pills lying around the bathroom for a while. They seem to have decided to try for a baby. Not that it worries me. On the contrary, it gives me ideas.

I let them head back to Paris at their own pace. I waited around until noon, when the estate agent closed for the day. The house in the window is marked
SOLD
. Fine. It will mean spending weekends in the country. Why not?

January 17

Ideas are curious things. They evidently come from a certain receptiveness of mind. So, the day before yesterday, as I was wandering aimlessly around their apartment, I began leafing through some books Sophie has stacked next to the desk in the study. Almost at the bottom of the pile, there were two titles from the Press Research Library: a monograph about the journalist Albert Londres, and a
French–English Glossary of Media and Marketing Terms
. Both borrowed on the same day. I returned them. There is an “express counter” where people in a hurry can simply deposit their books. It saves time. I found it very practical.

January 18

Something else to put in her notebook: Sophie somehow missed two final demands for the phone bill. Now they’ve been cut off. Vincent isn’t happy. Sophie is crying. Things are bad at the moment, they argue a lot. For all that, Sophie is doing her best to pay careful attention to her actions, to Vincent, to everything
– she may even be trying not to dream. She contacts her therapist to see whether she can bring her next appointment forward. Her sleep patterns are chaotic, they fluctuate wildly, some nights she feels as if she has slipped into a coma, other nights she cannot get a wink of sleep. She spends long hours standing at the open window, smoking. I’m worried she’ll catch a cold.