A Secret kept by Rosnay Tatiana de

Author:Rosnay, Tatiana de [Rosnay, Tatiana de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Littérature Française
Publisher: Bibliothèque d'Onega - lien privé -
Published: 2012-05-20T15:09:43+00:00

Pauline’s bag is in the entrance, a pile of clothes neatly folded next to it. My eyes turn back to the bag and the clothes again and again. It is late, two or three in the morning. The night feels like a bottomless pit. I am emptied of all tears. Dried out. I have smoked half a pack. My face is a puffy mess. My limbs ache. But the thought of going to bed scares me.

Margaux’s light is still on. I can hear regular breathing when I stick my ear to her door. She has passed out. The boys have too. The apartment is silent. There is hardly any traffic on the rue Froidevaux. I try not to look at the bag, but it seems to be calling out to me. After a while I give in. I tiptoe over to it, pick it up gingerly. I sit down, the bag and clothes on my lap. How is this possible? I wonder. Pauline is dead. And yet her stuff is here, on my lap. I zip the bag open. Fish around. A hairbrush. Long blond hairs still trapped in it. Pauline is dead, and strands of her hair are right here, shimmering between my fingers. I cannot understand it. Her phone is on silent mode. Thirty-two missed calls. Had her friends called her phone today just to hear her voice? Maybe I would have done just the same if my best friend had died. Schoolbooks. Neat handwriting. She was a good student. Better than Margaux. She wanted to be a doctor. Patrick was proud of that. Fourteen years old, and she already knew what she wanted to do. Her wallet. A purple diamanté affair. ID card. It was two years old. The photo was the Pauline I knew. The skinny kid I used to play hide-and-seek with. Makeup, lip gloss, a deodorant. Her date book. Homework for the next two weeks. I flip the pages. “Dallad on Sunday.” A pink heart. Dallad was Margaux’s nickname. Pauline was Pitou. Ever since they were small. Her clothes. The ones she had taken off to put her sport gear on. A white sweater and jeans. I put the sweater gently to my face. A mixture of cigarette smoke and fruity perfume. Pauline is dead, and her smell is still on that sweater.

I think of Patrick and Suzanne. Where are they now? With their daughter’s body? At home, where no sleep will come? Could Pauline have been saved? Perhaps she had a heart condition. Did anyone know? If she hadn’t been playing basketball, would she still be alive? The questions run round and round in my head. I feel a horrible panic grow. Getting up, I go to the window, wrench it open, letting the icy air seep through me. The cemetery stretches out in front of me, vast and dark. I keep thinking of Pauline, her dead body. Her braces. What will they do about her braces? Will she be buried with them?

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