This is Life (35 page)

—
And are you littering?

‘No!’ When she was fifteen her dad had found out she was smoking, and she had told him, with all the petulance she had inside her, that she wasn’t going to stop. He had made
her promise, though, that she wouldn’t ever throw litter on the ground. He told her that littering was the scummiest thing about smokers. What they did to their health was up to them, but he
hated the mess they made. Since that day, Aurélie hadn’t dropped a single match or cigarette butt on the ground. She still let her ash fall, though. She didn’t count that as
littering, and told herself it was good for plants.

She felt good to be able to tell him the truth about this. It was something he felt so strongly about that she would sooner tell him that she had been shooting babies than dropping her cigarette
butts on to the pavement.

They said goodbye, and Aurélie picked up her sketchpad. She was going to be a good girl for the rest of the day. A model daughter. A minute later she put her sketchpad down, and reached
for a cigarette. She lit it. Then, remembering her dad’s words, she stubbed it out in the ashtray, vowing never to smoke again. Then she picked it out of the ashtray, and lit it again. Today
was not the day.

S
ylvie Dupont drove back into the city, with Toshiro Akiyama by her side. Neither of them spoke, but neither felt the need to speak. She had
managed to convince her Wednesday boss that it would be a great idea for him to lend her a 2CV for the morning, so she could take Monsieur and Madame Akiyama to the airport. It had done a good job;
it had started at the first try, there weren’t too many ominous rattles, and they had made it to their destination with time to spare before the flight. The only problem had been the lack of
luggage space, which meant that her passengers had been buried under piles of bags. None of them seemed to mind, though. Even Monsieur Akiyama had been sanguine about the situation. Lucien had
taught Sylvie the Japanese for
senior position
and
large corporation
, and he hadn’t used the words once. Instead he had just sat there quite serenely, a heavy case squashing him
into the back seat.

Without its passengers and their baggage it looked as though the car was going to get the two of them back to the city without any drama, too. At red lights she and Toshiro looked at one
another, and held hands, relying on the honking horns of other drivers to let them know when it was time for them to move on.

That morning, Madame Akiyama had been impatient to get back to Funabashi and tell Akiko all about Toshiro’s new romance, and she had used the journey and check-in queue
as an opportunity to take as many photos of the couple as she could, for inclusion in her forthcoming illustrated lecture on the subject. She was determined to make the most of what little remained
of her time in France, and she used all the phrases she had learned over the preceding week, no matter how irrelevant they were to the situation.
Two tickets, please
, she said to nobody in
particular, or
Please excuse my husband, he speaks no French
. She planned to become fluent as quickly as possible, and she was going to start taking lessons as soon as they got back. Through
Lucien, she had already explained that she and her husband planned to be regular visitors to the city, now that Toshiro was going to be settling there.

It was Madame Akiyama who had spotted the picture of Aurélie and Herbert on the front page of the newspaper. She had been so excited that she had bought a copy straight away, and when she
opened it and saw the picture of Aurélie and Sylvie on the steps of
Life
, she was so ecstatic that she bought five more copies to distribute among friends and family. While Madame
Akiyama was queuing, Sylvie had called Aurélie and left a message to let her know she had suddenly become a media star. And while she had her phone in her hand, she had sent a quick text to
Lucien, saying hello and asking how he was doing.

She would never receive a reply.

When the time had come to say goodbye, she had embraced Monsieur and Madame Akiyama with all her strength, and she had vainly fought tears as she watched them vanish behind the security doors.
She was really going to miss them, but she consoled herself with the thought that they would be meeting again before too long. In a couple of days she would be ringing around all her bosses,
arranging time off for her visit to Japan. She already knew which bosses would be OK about it, and which would cause trouble, but the difficult ones could get stuffed. She would just leave. She
wasn’t going to let anyone come between her and her trip to Toshiro’s homeland.

They drove up the steep and narrow west end of rue Norvins, and this time the clutch held out. She dropped the car off with her boss, and took Toshiro’s arm as they
walked down the hill and through the streets to her apartment. He always glided quite naturally to the kerb side of the pavement, and she appreciated that. Quite a few of her suitors had been
dropped after taking a lackadaisical approach to positioning as they walked along the street. One of the last things her mother had said to her was:
Sylvie, never give yourself to a man who
walks on the inside of the pavement. It’s a signifier: if he won’t even offer you this small act of consideration, how will he treat you in other aspects of your life?
She
hadn’t really known what she was talking about at the time, but she had remembered these words and come to regard this as important advice; she always looked with pity at women whose men
wouldn’t follow this simple code. She didn’t feel a sense of relief with Toshiro, though; she had known from the moment she had seen his photograph that he was the kind of man who would
walk on the outside.

On Tuesdays she normally worked a late shift on the door of a drag cabaret show, but she had arranged for one of her colleagues to take her place. This was to be her first full day off in
months, and she was going to spend it in the best way imaginable.

Toshiro had not been to her apartment before, but she chose to leave the full guided tour of its three tiny rooms until later. When the door closed behind them, they stood and
looked at one another. They were alone together for the first time. She unbuttoned his shirt, and he pulled the poppers on her dress, and everything was as wonderful as they had known it would
be.

A
urélie spent a quiet evening in with the Papavoines. They took turns amusing Herbert, all of them trying hard not to think about how they
would be saying goodbye to him forever the next day.

While Liliane was in the shower and Professor Papa-voine was busy sending the baby crawling after a ball with a bell in it that had been a favourite toy of a long-deceased cat of theirs,
Aurélie sent a message to her boyfriend, via his doctor, in which she told him that she wouldn’t be going back to the venue until the very end of the run, and that she wasn’t
going to be sending him regular texts or expecting messages from him. She told him she was going to be busy for the coming weeks, that she had a major project to absorb her. He, of all people,
would understand this.

She didn’t want him to worry that she wouldn’t be there for him at the end, and she would be in touch from time to time, just to let him know she was thinking of him. She
didn’t want to bother his doctor too much, either. She was sure she had better things to do with her time than secretly pass on romantic notes while pretending to attend to a very slightly
sprained knee.

She insisted on making mashed potato for dinner, and was pleased with the rapturous reception it received. Even Herbert shovelled his down quite joyfully and banged his spoon for seconds. After
dinner, as Herbert began to flag, so did she. She decided on an early night. She had to be up first thing in the morning, to go back to her apartment to collect some of Herbert’s clothes that
she had left hanging up to dry, before returning to the scene of the crime. As long as she was in the square by nine twenty-two, everything would be fine.

She had already set her alarm for six. The Papavoines offered to get up with her and make her breakfast, but she insisted they had done enough and should stay in bed. She knew her way around the
kitchen well enough. It was time to say goodbye.

She told them she didn’t know how to thank them, and the four of them came together in a group hug. Apart from Herbert, who blew a long, clear raspberry, nobody quite knew what to say.

As soon as Herbert was in his freshly laundered Eiffel Tower and Mona Lisa pyjamas (the blood had washed out, but she hadn’t patched the bullet hole in the shoulder) his
eyes, which had been barely open, pinged wide awake. He gave Aurélie a big smile. He was ready for fun.

Aurélie read to him from the pile of picture books that Liliane had put by her bedside, and sang ‘Hier Encore’ a few times, and cuddled him and tried her best to soothe him. Whenever his eyes seemed to glaze over, she tried putting him to bed, but he thrashed and
wailed and would not put up with it. It was past midnight by the time he finally flaked out. Aurélie gently picked him up and lowered him into his cot. The instant he touched the mattress he
woke up, and was immediately furious.

She calmed him down by showing him his photograph on the front page of the newspaper. He was mesmerised. When his attention began to wander, she found the horoscopes. ‘This is how
we’ll find out what you’ve done today, Herbert,’ she said. She read his out to him. ‘
Aquarius
: Money has been on your mind a lot lately. A big decision will soon be
made, and you will feel a great sense of relief. A stranger in yellow brings good luck.’ Aurélie thought back through the day. She was fairly sure there had been no stranger in yellow.
It was a shame. They could both have done with some good luck.

An hour later Herbert fell asleep on the bed again, and this time she left him there, and lay beside him. Her mind was busy turning over everything that had been going on, and for all her
exhaustion it would not switch off. When it finally did, her sleep was fitful, and punctuated by unpleasant dreams. At one point she woke to feel her heart racing, and she was gripped with a fear
that Herbert was no longer there. It was a while before her eyes adjusted to the dark and she could see him by her side, sleeping peacefully. The adrenaline kept her awake for a long time
afterwards.

The next time she woke up she checked the clock on her phone. Her alarm was going to be going off in twenty minutes, and then she was going to have to go halfway across the city to give Herbert
back.

She didn’t want to give him back.

She watched him in the dark, this beautiful, strange and innocent creature she had grown to love. She thought of his mother, who hadn’t even kissed him goodbye. What kind of life would he
have with her?

MERCEDI

A
urélie Renard checked the time. She had got there twenty minutes early. She sat on the bench adjacent to The Russian’s
.
He was
playing his
Russian instrument
in his usual spot, and the music they were making together was so melancholy that it cut right through her. It was the perfect soundtrack for her state of mind.
Herbert had fallen asleep in his buggy, so she wasn’t even able to bond with him in these last precious moments they had together. All she could do was look at him as the music crashed over
her. It was heartbreaking.

She was dreading the arrival of his mother. She hoped she would have calmed down over the preceding week, and would be pleased to see her son safe and well, and would scoop him up and kiss him
and cuddle him. She needed to be reassured that she wasn’t handing him over to a horrible person, that he would be growing up with someone who would give him all the love he deserved.

She and Herbert had taken the Métro from the Papavoines’ to her apartment. The place was just as she had left it, only colder and with a bit of a musty smell. She
found everything of his that she had left behind, and stuffed it all in his bag. Sitting on the bedside table was the copy of
Your Baby & You
. She hadn’t even opened it. She would
read it when she got back, to find out what she should have been doing all this time.

She was about to leave when she thought of something. The gun was still in a drawer, hiding under some clothes. She found it, and held it. It felt so much heavier than before, as if weighed down
by its unhappy history. She found a tea towel and rubbed it, wiping off her fingerprints, as she had seen criminals do in films. Then she wrapped it up and put it in her bag. She would track Sylvie
down later on and hand it back with thanks, and tell her she never wanted to see it again.

As she left her apartment, she came face-to-face with Madame Peypouquet.

‘Hello, Madame Peypouquet,’ she said.

She looked at Herbert. ‘That thing’s been quiet these last few days,’ she said.

‘I found a volume switch,’ said Aurélie. ‘I think I’ll lose points for turning it down, but it doesn’t matter. I know I’m not ready for a real one. Not
yet, anyway. As a matter of fact I can’t stop because I’m off right now to get him plugged into the computer. They’ll take all the information from the microchip and give me a
mark out of ten for my mothering skills.’

‘Let me know what you score. I’m not going to wish you luck, because you know my thoughts on the matter. Oh, and by the way, did you see yourself in the newspaper yesterday? Monsieur
Simoneaux came up here in his pyjamas and slippers to show me. They thought the baby was real!’ Madame Peypouquet smiled, revealing more gums than teeth, and the few teeth there were stuck
out at extraordinary angles, like abandoned gravestones. ‘If only they knew!’

Aurélie returned her smile, and backed away. ‘I must be going, Madame Peypouquet,’ she said.

‘And you’re doing it with that naked man behind the handsome boy’s back? Or is it the other way round? Either way, I like your style,’ she said. ‘I always thought
you were too prim for your own good, but you’ve proved me wrong. And good for you – if you can’t have fun while you’re young, when can you?’