Blood Wedding (19 page)

We talked about holidays; last month Andrée spent a few days at her parents’ place in Pau, so I was treated to little anecdotes about her father’s eccentricities, her mother’s phobias, the dog’s antics. I smiled. Honestly, it was as much as I could do.

I was treated to what is called “fine dining”. Well, what she calls “fine dining”. Only the wine could have been called “fine”, but that had been recommended by her local merchant. She knows nothing about wine. She had made a “signature cocktail” which was almost indistinguishable from her perfume.

As I feared, when dinner was over, Andrée served coffee on the low table next to the sofa. When she had settled herself next to me, and after a long pause that she no doubt intended to be meaningful and compassionate, the fat sow informed me that she could “empathise” with my “problems in that department”. She said it with the religious fervour of a nun. I bet she thinks it’s a godsend. She’s obviously desperate to get laid, since I’m guessing she doesn’t often get the chance, so finding a lover who has “problems in that department” makes her feel useful. I pretended to be embarrassed. There was an awkward silence. Whenever this happens, she tries to distract me by talking about her work, like
anyone who has nothing much to say. Always the same stories. But at some point, she mentioned the press department. I was instantly on the alert. Within a few minutes I had managed to steer the conversation towards Sophie, subtly at first, talking about how the big auctions must create so much work for everyone. Having rambled on about half the people in the company, she finally got onto the subject of Sophie. She was dying to tell me about the photographs. She laughed like a drain. With friends like her . . .

“I’ll miss her when she leaves,” she said. So she was definitely leaving.

I pricked up my ears. And this was when I got the whole story. Sophie was not only leaving Percy’s, she was leaving Paris. It was not
a country house
they had been looking for over the past month, it was
a home in the country
. Sophie’s husband has just been appointed director of a new research facility in Senlis, and they are planning to move there.

“But what is she going to do?” I said.

“What do you mean?” She seemed surprised that I should be interested.

“Well, you’ve always said she’s a career woman, so I was wondering . . . what could she find to do out in the country?”

Andrée flashed me a conspiratorial smile and told me that Sophie is “expecting a baby”. Although this is hardly news, I was shaken. It seems a rash thing to do, given the state she is in.

“So have they found somewhere?”

According to Andrée, they’ve found “a beautiful house in the Oise”, with easy access to the
autoroute
.

A baby. And moving to the country, too . . . I had hoped my little trick with the press kit would force her to stop work temporarily, but now she is pregnant and leaving Paris. I needed to give serious
thought to these new factors. I got up and stammered something. I had to leave, it was getting late.

“But you haven’t even touched your coffee.”

I didn’t give a damn about her coffee. I went and fetched my jacket and headed for the door.

I don’t know quite how it happened. Andrée followed me to the door. She had a very different plan for the evening. She said it was a shame, that it was not yet late, especially for a Friday night. I mumbled something about having to work in the morning. I knew I had no further use for Andrée, but to avoid burning my bridges completely I said something that I intended to be reassuring. It was at this point that she pounced. She pulled me to her, kissed my neck. She must have felt my resistance. I don’t remember what she whispered, something about “taking care” of me, she would be patient, I didn’t need to worry, after all, such things happen to most men at some point . . . I could have tolerated all that had she not slipped her hand around my waist. Dangerously low. I could not control myself any longer. Coming on top of the evening I’d just had, the devastating news, it was all too much. I shoved her hard. She was startled by my reaction, but still tried to press her advantage. She smiled at me, a grotesque, double-chinned leer – ugly women are so crude when it comes to sexual desire – I couldn’t stop myself. I slapped her. Hard. She brought her hand up to her cheek. Her eyes registered absolute astonishment. Immediately I realised the enormity of the situation, and how useless she had been. After everything I had forced myself to do for her. So I slapped the other cheek, and I went on hitting her until she began to sob. I was no longer afraid. I looked around the room, at the table and the remnants of the meal, at the sofa and the coffee we had not touched. I felt an overpowering disgust. I took
her by the shoulders and hugged her towards me as though to comfort her. She offered no resistance, assuming that this painful interlude was at an end. I walked over to the window and opened it wide, as if to get a breath of fresh air, and I waited. I knew that she would follow. It only took two minutes. I heard her snuffling pathetically behind me. Then I heard her footsteps and an acrid cloud of perfume enfolded me one last time. I held my breath, I turned and once again I took her by the shoulders, and when she was pressed against me, whimpering like a puppy, I wheeled around gently as though to kiss her, and with a vicious shove, I pushed her. I just had time to see the terror on her face as she toppled out of the window. She did not even scream. Two, maybe three seconds later, I heard a gruesome sound from the courtyard below. I began to sob. I was shaking from head to foot, trying to stop the image of Maman from rising up before me. But I must have had some last vestige of self-control, because an instant later I had grabbed my jacket and was running wildly down the stairs.

February 24

It goes without saying that Andrée’s fall was a terrible ordeal for me. Not because the dumb bitch died, but because of the
way
she died. In retrospect, I am surprised that I felt nothing when Vincent’s mother died. But in that case, I was dealing with stairs. That night it was not Andrée flying through the window, but Maman. But it was not as upsetting as it has been in the dreams that have haunted me for years now. It is as though I have begun to make my peace with things. That is something I owe to Sophie. It’s probably what shrinks call “transference”.

February 26

This
morning, Sophie attended the funeral of her beloved colleague. She wore black. When I saw her leave in her mourning clothes, I thought she looked rather pretty for a dead woman walking. Two funerals in such a short space of time must be unsettling. In fact, I have to admit I feel rather unsettled by Andrée’s death myself, and especially by how it happened. It feels blasphemous. Like an affront to my mother. Painful images from my childhood came flooding back, and I had to fight them every inch of the way. Perhaps all the women who love me are destined to throw themselves out of windows.

I reassessed the situation. Things are far from brilliant, it goes without saying, but it has not been a complete disaster. I will have to be more careful. As long as I don’t make any more mistakes, I should be alright. No-one at Percy’s knows me, I never went back there after the night I met Andrée.

Of course my fingerprints will be all over her apartment, but I don’t have a police record so, barring accidents, it’s unlikely that they will be able to link her to me. Even so, I need to be very cautious. Another fuck-up like that could put my whole plan in jeopardy.

February 28

As for Sophie’s decision, it’s not the end of the world. She’s moving out of Paris, so I will simply have to deal with that. What is frustrating is seeing my elaborate technical set-up become obsolete. But what is done is done. There’s no way I will be able to find an observation post as perfect as this out in the country, but I’m sure I’ll find something.

The
baby is due in the summer. I have begun to factor this in to my strategy for the coming months.

March 5

All systems go: this morning the removals van pulled up outside. It was not even 7.00 a.m., but the lights in the apartment had been on since 5.00 and I could see Sophie and her husband rushing around. At about 8.30, Vincent went to work, leaving his wife to cope with everything. The guy is a complete shit.

I can’t see any point in keeping this room on now: it would be a painful reminder of the wonderful moments living so close to Sophie, of a time when at any moment I could look onto her windows, see her moving around, take photographs . . . I have hundreds now. Sophie in the street, in the
métro
, at the wheel of her car. Sophie, naked, at her bedroom window. Sophie kneeling in front of her husband, Sophie painting her toenails in the living room . . .

The day will come when I will truly miss Sophie, I know that. But that day is still a way off.

March 7

Minor technical glitch: I managed to recover only two of the three microphones. The third obviously disappeared during the move; those things are so small.

March 18

It’s freezing cold out in the country. And God, but it’s bleak. I can’t understand what Sophie is doing here. I suppose she’s traipsing
after her husband. A good little wife. I’ll give it three months before she’s bored to death. She’ll have her big belly to keep her company, but she’ll have so many other things to worry about . . . I recognise that it was a good promotion for Vincent, but I think he’s being very selfish.

Sophie moving out to live in the Oise will mean me having to travel long distances, and in the dead of winter. So I checked into a little hotel in Compiègne. I told them I’m a writer. Finding a lookout post, on the other hand, took a lot longer. But I managed in the end. I slip through the crumbling section of wall at the rear of the house. The motorbike I park in a rickety shack with only half the roof still in place. It’s quite some distance from the house and the bike is not visible from the road. Not that many people pass this way.

Apart from the cold, everything is going well for me. I can’t say the same for Sophie. Hardly had she moved in than the problems started. Even for someone who is very active, the days tend to drag in such a vast house. For the first few days, the builders offered some distraction, but then there was a cold snap and they had to stop working. Who knows when they will be back. The upshot is that the ground in front of the house churned up by the trucks has frozen over and Sophie sprains her ankle whenever she tries to go out. To make matters worse, the weather is still miserable. When they didn’t need it, the stack of firewood seemed close by, but now . . . Worst of all, she is completely isolated. From time to time she takes her cup of tea out onto the front steps. It’s hard to keep cheerful when you’re alone all day and your husband comes home at all hours.

Proof, if it were needed, came this morning when the door opened and a cat slunk out. Not a bad idea, really. It sat on the
threshold staring out at the gardens. It is a handsome black-and-white cat. After a few minutes it went to do its business, never straying far from the house. This must have been one of its first forays into the wild. Sophie was watching from the kitchen window. I skirted round to the back of the house and we came nose to nose, the cat and I. I stopped dead. It’s not at all feral. It’s a rather sweet animal. I crouched down and called it. It hesitated a moment and then padded over, arching its back so I could stroke it. I took it in my arms and it began to purr. I felt a tautness, a fevered anxiety. The cat was still purring as I carried it towards the shed where Vincent keeps his tools.

March 25

I have not been to visit for several days, not since the night Sophie found her cat nailed to the door of her husband’s shed. It was a terrible shock, understandably. I arrived at about 9.00 p.m. just as Sophie was leaving. I saw her putting an overnight bag into the boot of her car. I waited half an hour, just to be sure, then jemmied one of the shutters at the back of the house and crawled inside to take a look. Sophie has been busy. She has already painted most of the downstairs rooms – the kitchen, the living room and another room, although I don’t know what they’ll use that for. A pretty pastel yellow edged with a darker yellow. The exposed beams in the living room are painted pistachio green (as far as I can judge), but it all looks very pretty. It must be a painstaking task. Countless hours of work. The builders have left the concrete bathroom walls unplastered, but everything is working, there is hot water. The kitchen is also being completely refurbished. The workmen have left the new cabinets in the middle of the floor; I suppose
they have to deal with the plumbing before they can be mounted. I made some tea and had a little think. I wandered through the rooms, took two or three trinkets as souvenirs, the sort of thing no-one would ever miss, but they’re a surprise when you stumble upon them. Then, having made my decision, I fetched the tins of paint and the rollers. It took me a lot less time than Sophie to redecorate from floor to ceiling, though my style is a little more “spontaneous”. The kitchen cabinets have been reduced to sticks and kindling, I cleaned up the dribbles of paint with the table linen and used this to add a dash of colour to the furniture, I hacked through the pipes in the bathroom and the kitchen and turned on the taps before I left.

I don’t need to come back for a while.

March 26

Shortly after they moved in, Sophie met Laure Dufresne, who teaches at the village school. They are about the same age, and they hit it off immediately. I went and had a nose around Laure’s place when she was in class. I wouldn’t want to be caught. Nothing to report. A nice quiet life. A nice quiet girl. She and Sophie see a lot of each other. Laure pops by for coffee when she finishes work. Sophie went round to help move new furniture into the classroom. Through my binoculars, I saw them laughing and joking together. I have a feeling this new friend is just what Sophie needs.

I have started to make plans. The question is how to make use of all this new information. I think I’ve come up with something.