The Red Notebook (14 page)

Wednesday 12 February

I haven’t kept a diary since I was seventeen. I think it was soon after my baccalauréat that I gave it up for reasons I’m not sure of, because from the age of twelve or thirteen I had written one religiously. (Note to self: Look for my diaries in the boxes in the cellar.) I remember sticking all kinds of things in them: tickets from films and plays I had been to see, leaves I had picked up on walks and bills for meals I had eaten on café terraces. They were a record of what I had done when, down to the nearest minute. I think I held on to them as ‘evidence’ of some kind. They helped me to find my place in the world and, in a broader sense, to prove to myself that I really existed. I suppose I must have decided at some point that I no longer needed to do that, because I gave up writing a diary, stopped telling the story of my life and tried to just live it instead.

I’m certainly not planning to go back to writing down everything I do each day. For starters, I don’t do enough noteworthy things, and besides I already jot stuff in my red notebook if the urge takes me. But since this morning, I’ve been feeling the need to make a record of what has
happened. I know the name and address of the man who brought my bag back. His name is Laurent Letellier. He’s the owner of Le Cahier Rouge. I’ve just realised that’s almost word for word what his daughter told me. That sentence was so unexpected and it’s still lingering in my mind, bouncing around inside my head like that ancient video game with two lines either side of the screen and a dot going back and forth between them. I once spent an entire Saturday playing it with Natacha Rosen and her brother, David. That was over thirty years ago. I don’t know what they’re doing now, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one of us currently thinking about that rainy Saturday at their house in Garches.

The bookseller’s daughter is called Chloé. I had coffee with her sitting by the window of the studio. My grandmother would have described her as ‘a very determined little person’. That’s exactly what she is.

‘I think my dad wishes he’d given you his address, and I think you’d like to have it,’ she said without beating around the bush. She knows the whole story. I told her I had done the rounds of all the local bookshops, and she seemed to like that idea.

‘I’d have done exactly the same thing,’ she remarked, running her hand through her hair in a very feminine and ever so slightly arrogant way (was I like that at her age?). I had actually been into her father’s bookshop, but I hadn’t asked if there was a bookseller called Laurent. I’d had enough of the endless curious looks and disappointments by then.

‘When did you go to Le Cahier?’ she asked. She took out a Pléiade diary, telling me her father gave her one every year and she could get me one too if I wanted. Then she said something I had to get her to repeat: ‘Thursday? That’s the day we took Putin to get his jabs.’ (Chloé has a cat called Putin – she wouldn’t tell me why.) After that she stood up, saying it was time to go to school. She asked me to promise never to tell her father she had come. I promised.

She also asked if I had a husband and children. I told her I didn’t have children, but that I had had a husband and that he was dead, that he had been killed a long way away in Baghdad in a terrorist attack. Chloé looked straight at me, shaking her head very slowly without saying a word. I liked the fact she held my gaze; normally when I tell people, they look away and then turn back with sympathy in their eyes, and I feel like giving them a slap.

Thursday 13 February

I pressed the buzzer and heard his voice. It was a little after 8 p.m. The bookshop shutters were down. There were a number of names on the building’s intercom, including a certain ‘L. Letellier’.

‘Hello?’ said the voice.

I wanted to reply: ‘I’m Laure Valadier …’ He would probably have paused for a moment and told me to come up. Or perhaps he would have come down. But I couldn’t get the words out. I suddenly felt the need to give myself a bit more time, so I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got the wrong address.’

‘No problem. Have a good evening,’ the voice replied, and the conversation ended with a click.

I remained outside the glass door, looking in at the entrance hall. There was a door on the right which must be the way into the bookshop; the same kind of door leads to the design shop Arcane 17 beneath my flat. I looked at the staircase and the mosaic tiled floor, and thought about the fact that these were things this man – whom I don’t know but who knows me so well – saw every day. Chloé told me he has not always been a bookseller; he used to be an investment banker until one day he decided to pack it all in. As someone who has been doing the same thing for the last twenty-four years, I like the idea that it’s possible to start a new life.

As I walked back to the taxi rank, I kept thinking how strange it was that we had actually spoken, although he didn’t know it. Even distorted by the intercom, he had a nice voice, and his ‘Have a good evening’ stayed with me throughout my dinner at Jacques and Sophie’s. Everywhere I go I end up having to tell the whole story of the mugging and the coma; I’m getting a bit tired of talking about it. I haven’t even mentioned it to my sister, who sent me an email saying, ‘No news? All good?’ I replied, ‘Yes, all good, you?’ I’m not sure I ever will tell her everything that’s happened over the last two weeks. I have less and less in common with Bénédicte and when we talk about the past, our memories are completely at odds. Sometimes it feels as if we didn’t have the same parents.

Friday 14 February

Today I imitated Sophie Calle. I went to see the bookshop from the outside. I found a bench in the square and sat looking through the window of Le Cahier Rouge. There were three people inside: a tall boy with a goatee and long hair, a blonde woman in her sixties, and Laurent. He is much as William described him. (William, by the way, can’t get over the fact I’ve found his address – he keeps badgering me to go into the shop.) Laurent is indeed ‘fairly tall, slim, light-brown hair, mid-forties, brown eyes’, but then I always knew William could be relied upon to describe a guy. At first I had to watch him from a distance because I didn’t want to get too close to the shop window. I know he would recognise my face. At eleven o’clock, the long-haired bookseller with the goatee came out into the square to meet a guy in a hoodie who sold him some weed. I’m sure that’s what it was: a quick, no-nonsense transaction under the statue. I don’t know if Laurent is aware of his employee’s predilection for marijuana, but the blonde woman gave the kid a look and shook her head in resignation when he came back in – she’s definitely on to him.

At lunchtime, Laurent went out, and I followed him. He walked up to the top of Rue de la Pentille and then turned into Rue du Passe-Musette. I was quite a long way behind him and could only see him from the back. It occurred to me I should have brought Xavier’s Nikon 51, the only one of his cameras I’ve ever known how to use. I could have taken pictures and emailed them to him at the bookshop anonymously. He sat down outside a café by the market
called l’Espérance. I waited at the corner of the road for a little while before going to sit two tables behind him. The waiter joked that it was quite an event to see him there for lunch. They had a short conversation from which I gathered that Laurent usually visited the café first thing in the morning. I ordered a Caesar salad and a glass of white wine; the bill’s pasted below. So it was 1.38 p.m. and the waiter was named on the slip as: garçon 2. Caesar salad: €9.30. Glass of wine: €4.20. Coffee: €2.20. Total: €15.70.

Laurent had a meat dish with a sauce, a glass of red wine and coffee. He spent his lunch break reading a book with a strange-looking white cover. It must have been one of those copies that booksellers get sent before they are published. He had a pencil in his hand and was underlining parts of the text. Leaning forward, I was able to see him in profile. Laurent has a very straight nose and full lips and he hadn’t shaved. He has gentle, almost sad-looking eyes which suddenly wrinkled up with laughter when the waiter made some joke I didn’t catch. I’ve always liked men who can go from looking serious to warm in the space of a few seconds. That was true of Xavier, and my father.

Two tables from Laurent there was a blonde woman in a grey suit reading a file. Twice she glanced up at him, drawing on her Vogue cigarette as if deep in thought. She looked like the kind of woman who knew she only had to smile to catch a man’s attention, reeling him in in the time it took to ask him to pass the salt.

‘I have no sugar,’ she said loudly. ‘Could I have some sugar please, garçon?’

Laurent, who hadn’t used his sugar, didn’t even look up from his book while the waiter moved the bowl to the woman’s table. Better luck next time, I thought, smiling to myself. As with most men who are attractive without being conventionally handsome, Laurent is clearly oblivious of his charms. The woman left without adding a grain of sugar to her coffee.

I’m scared I might like this man.

Saturday 15 February

I’ve had my hair cut. The last time I had it done was after scattering Xavier’s ashes at Cap de la Hague. I can’t remember the name of the salon I went to near Barneville. I can’t even remember the hairdresser’s face. Anyway, it’s pretty short … But I think that’s a good thing. I asked Catherine to collect up the hair. She put it in a plastic bag for me. I burnt it on the fire.

Sunday 16 February

Nothing.

I shouldn’t have cut my hair.

Monday 17 February

The bookshop’s shut. Stupid me, I should have known. I’ll go tomorrow.

Tuesday 18 February

I’ll go tomorrow.

Wednesday 19 February

I’ve written so much that I’m almost at the end of my red notebook – I’ve even started writing on the inside of the back cover. But I only have a few lines to go. I’m sitting on a bench in the square. The two other booksellers have gone. Laurent hasn’t locked the door. I can see him standing on a ladder at the back of the shop. This time, I’m going in.