Lean on Me E-Book

Serge Joncour

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 498

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A prize-winning bestseller in France, this is the unlikely love story of two lonely people in Paris.When a flock of crows invades their shared apartment block, farmer-turned-debt collector Ludovic and fashion designer Aurore speak for the first time. With nothing but the birds in common, the two are destined for separate lives, yet are drawn inexplicably together.With one trapped in an unhappy marriage and the other lost in grief, the city of love has brought each of them only isolation and pain. As Aurore faces losing her business and Ludovic questions the ethics of his job, they begin a passionate affair. Love between such different people seems doomed to failure, but for these two unhappy souls trapped in ruthless worlds, perhaps loving one another is the greatest form of resistance.From the award-winning author of Wild Dog, Lean on Me explores the realities of unlikely love, and how connection and intimacy offer us an escape from all that is harsh and cold in our modern day lives.

Leseprobe

Serge Joncour is a French novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Paris in 1961 and studied philosophy at university before deciding to become a writer. His first novel, Vu, was published by Le Dilettante in 1998. He wrote the screenplay for Sarah’s Key starring Kristin Scott Thomas, released in 2011. His 2016 novel Repose-toi sur moi won the Prix Interallié. Wild Dog (Chien loup), also published by Gallic Books, won the Prix Landerneau des Lecteurs.

Jane Aitken is a publisher and translator from the French.

Louise Rogers Lalaurie is a writer and translator. She is based in France and the UK.

Also by Serge Joncour:

Wild Dog

Lean on Me

by Serge Joncour

Translated from the French by Jane Aitken and Louise Rogers Lalaurie

Pushkin Press

A Gallic Book

First published in France as Repose-toi sur moi

Copyright © Flammarion, 2016

English translation copyright © Jane Aitken and Louise Rogers Lalaurie, 2022

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Gallic Books Ltd

12 Eccleston Street, London, SW1W 9LT

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

No reproduction without permission

All rights reserved

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781805334286

Typeset in Fournier MT by Gallic Books

Printed in the UK by CPI (CR0 4YY)

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I

Ludovic always took a deep breath before ringing the bell, quickening his pulse in anticipation of a frosty or angry reception. Then he would draw himself up to his full and considerable height, puff out his chest, and wait for the door to open.

But now, at the sight of the elderly woman emerging onto the top step of the small, rather shabby house, he knew he faced a different challenge altogether. He must resist feeling sorry for her.

In the sitting room, Ludovic chose the big armchair on the far side of the coffee table. The old woman took forever to sit down. Ludovic couldn’t help thinking she was exaggerating, unless she really did have a bad back, and legs, and more. He waited for her to settle, laid out some documents from the file he had brought, but already she was struggling up out of her chair, and shuffling towards the corridor. She was going to fetch her specs, only she wasn’t sure where they were.

Three minutes passed, and still she had not reappeared. An excruciating wait. Pauses such as this always made Ludovic feel awkward and embarrassed. He hated silences, much preferred it when things came together quickly, even if that meant a heated exchange. His visits did sometimes provoke anger, and shouting. More than once, like last week, a guy had even pulled a knife on him. But today was nothing like that. He would never let it show, but he felt ashamed inside. The old lady reminded him of his mother: she was more or less the same age, had the same trouble walking. The likeness had bothered him when she first answered the doorbell. In his work, he relied on his imposing build to make an impression. A stern gaze helped, too. He wasn’t trying to scare people, just to show that he would not soften or be swayed by emotion. It worked, as a rule, but sometimes it was hard. It was hardest of all when he felt, as now, that he understood everything about the person whose home he was entering, the little old lady who had invited him down the narrow concrete path and along the hallway of her modest house in Sevran, on the north-eastern edge of Paris. He had figured everything out about this old lady with her shuffling gait, sensed it all straight away. She had spent most of her life here; he spotted the signs of old, die-hard habits, the long-abandoned kennel, the garden no one saw to any more, her husband’s shoes tucked under the dresser, though it seemed he was out, or asleep, or in hospital. Ludovic was unsure, for now, where this brave little lady stood in life, though he knew she was in debt, of course – the house was not unpleasant, but there was a whiff of bad luck, and withered hopes.

From the cooking smells that hung in every room, he immediately recognised the old-school cuisine – refried butter, frozen steaks sizzling in a fat-filled pan, Brussels sprouts that had hung around too long outside the fridge. There was the battery-powered radio on the side, and the neatly aligned slippers. And overlaying the rest, the faint, stale odour of last night’s supper, the reek of a poor diet – too much fat, possibly too much drink – that he often noticed when he turned up unannounced in people’s homes. It was the cumulative impression that struck him every time, the inevitable result of arriving brazen and unexpected at the home of a person you’ve never met. He had shown her the headed notepaper, with its official-looking red-white-and-blue logo, over the top of the gate and she had signalled for him to step up the path straight away, politely, making no trouble. She was clearly not planning to make a run for it; any attempt on her part would be pathetic indeed, and a very poor reflection on Ludovic. It depressed him to handle situations where people showed bad faith from the start, poisoning the encounter with their lack of scruples, or their downright dishonesty.

The old lady returned with her glasses and asked him if he would like anything to drink, a beer perhaps, or a glass of port, but he refused. To accept a drink would alter the tone. This was not a courtesy call. The real risk in debt collection this way, face to face, was allowing yourself to be deflected, and then there was no way back. Casting his eye over the file, Ludovic realised the woman was not as old as all that. She was seventy-six, according to the date of birth on the forms, but her memory was failing, or she pretended it was, because now she was serving him that glass of port, and one for herself, in two little schooners full to the brim, which she placed carefully on the coffee table. Ludovic made a show of pushing his glass away and taking up most of the table with the papers from his folder. Faced with all these documents, all the letters on red-white-and-blue-headed paper, the woman rose again from her chair. Ludovic sensed her panic. She was plainly affected by his copies of all the reminders she had received. There was no hiding now, the evidence was there in front of her, the debt was real. They had caught up with her.

‘You know, Madame Salama, the longer you let this drag on, the worse it gets. I’m here to help you, Madame Salama. That’s why I’ve come, to help you sort this out so that you don’t have to worry about it anymore. That’s my job, to make sure things don’t get out of hand. Do you understand?’

Ludovic attended every meeting equipped with a cardboard folder bearing the debtor’s name, written conspicuously on the cover. Just one cardboard folder, not a binder. The technique emphasised his personal approach – he had travelled just for her, he had come to see her alone, whose surname was written in black marker on the red file, rather like a set of doctor’s notes. A thick file, stuffed with papers, 90 per cent of which were nothing to do with the case in hand. After two years in this job, Ludovic knew one thing at least: a fat folder was far more intimidating than his own impressive bulk.

‘You know, I never really understood all the paperwork, those registered letters and all that … ’

‘Of course, Madame Salama, but if you’ll just sit down again I can explain everything.’

He sensed her anxiety, so he softened his tone, addressed her as one human being to another. ‘Don’t worry, everyone has unpaid bills. These days it’s practically the norm: there’s something you need to buy, you get into debt, but then when you’ve bought it you forget you still have to finish paying for it. It’s the system, it steers you into debt … ’

‘It was for my granddaughter, you see, it wasn’t for us.’

‘The ring, it was for your granddaughter?’

‘Yes, for her wedding.’

‘OK, but as far as I can see, she got married two years ago, and the ring is still not paid for. Two years is a long time, don’t you think? And apart from the deposit, only one payment’s been made, and not a full payment either – is that right?’

‘She’s got divorced since then. Poor child, she’s such a good girl, an absolute love. She hasn’t had things easy, believe me, but she really is a good girl.’

‘I’m sure she is, Madame Salama, but I haven’t come here to talk about your granddaughter. It’s the ring I’m concerned about.’

‘He left her with two small children; he just took off one day.’

‘Right, but from what I can see, your granddaughter’s husband isn’t mentioned anywhere in the file. You agreed to pay for the ring in instalments, didn’t you, Madame Salama? Expecting that he would pay you back?’

‘Oh, I don’t know any more, it’s my husband who deals with all the paperwork; he’s always dealt with that side of things.’

‘I see. And where is Monsieur Salama?’

‘He’s in hospital.’

Ludovic’s pang of apprehension was justified. He must be careful not to weaken, not to give in to pity.

‘I see. But it’s your signature on the first cheque. That’s definitely yours, isn’t it?’

‘We use the same chequebook, and I can’t remember. You’re talking about things that happened three years ago and I’ve told you, they’ve got divorced since then.’

‘No, this was two years ago. And where is the ring now?’

Ludovic pretended to search through the papers. Already, he could picture the scene, his attempt to retrieve the ring from the granddaughter who has doubtless sold it already. Two screaming kids, a panicked young woman who has lost everything. Maybe she has a new boyfriend, and he’s there, standing between them. Ludovic would have to handle him, too, and try to keep a lid on things, stay calm.

He decided to try a little bluff.

‘Madame Salama, you wanted to help your granddaughter before, so here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to help her again, because if you don’t, she’s the one who will bear the brunt of this. If you do nothing, she’ll be the one who has to pay the seven hundred euros.’

‘Oh, I don’t want her to get into trouble … Oh my goodness, this would have to happen to me. Just my luck. I’ve never had much luck. Don’t tell me you’re going to get her into trouble … ’

‘That’s exactly why I’m here, to avoid any trouble for her. Listen to me, I can sort this whole thing out. I represent the jeweller in Livry-Gargan, where you bought the ring. He runs his own business, he’s got the shop and the workshop, and lately he’s been having a lot of trouble with people who don’t pay. He wants people to have their rings on time, so he lets them pay in instalments, but he’s the one who suffers if they don’t make the payments. I’m sure you understand that. He needs to get paid, or he’ll be forced to close. You can see that, I’m sure.’

‘Jewellers, they’re all thieves … ’

‘Not this one, Madame Salama, not this one, believe me. So, to resolve this, we’re going to do one simple thing. We’re going to plan your repayments, over twenty months if you prefer, and so that you don’t have to worry, you’re going to write out twenty cheques for thirty-five euros that the jeweller will pay in each month, and then we can avoid legal proceedings, or the bailiffs, or anything like that. That won’t happen, I promise. There won’t be any trouble.’

‘That’s all I need! For him to drag me through the courts – at my age. Well, let him try. If he wants a fight, he won’t be disappointed!’

‘Don’t upset yourself. I’m just here to make sure no one bothers you any more. We can talk this through. We’re going to take this slowly, month by month, you understand, Madame Salama, very slowly. You’ll see, if you trust me, Madame Salama, everything will be fine and just like that, thanks to you, everyone will be happy and your granddaughter won’t get into any trouble. Agreed? Let’s drink to that.’

‘Ah no! I don’t want that!’

‘What?’

‘For my granddaughter to get into trouble.’

She took a battered chequebook out of the dresser drawer, and straight away Ludovic was seized with doubt. He prayed she wasn’t about to write a series of cheques that would bounce. Already, he pictured himself having to come back in a week’s time, but forced to take a quite different tone, to raise his voice to this seventy-six-year-old woman. He crossed his fingers that she would not try to trick him now, that she would act in good faith. She downed her port in one gulp then poured herself a second glass, and he felt more worried still. Even writing the first cheque proved a challenge: she complained that she couldn’t do it, the pen wasn’t working, there wasn’t enough light. She got to her feet one more time and told him to do it. He could write the cheques out for her. She had decided to trust him and cautiously, he decided to trust her too. They would work together. But then, because he had a nose for trouble, because he noticed from the stubs that the last cheque had been written three years ago, because she was wearing two pairs of socks over her tights – not surprising, since the heating was clearly off – he realised this saga was far from over.

Aurore was surrounded by people, almost too many, she felt. The system had gone down and all the check-outs were frozen. Everyone stood in line with full baskets or trolleys; there was no turning back, short of dumping her groceries and walking out, but then what would they have for dinner? She glanced at her phone – it had signal, but there was nothing she could do. The check-out assistants seemed disoriented by the silence, unsure what to do in this unexpected lull. The tills had gone quiet, the chorus of beeps and the hum of the conveyor belts had ceased – there was almost no sound. People exchanged blank looks. Holding a walkie-talkie in one hand and offering chocolates to waiting shoppers with the other, the manager reassured everyone that the system would be back up and running in three or four minutes. Aurore wondered what might happen if she could take these three or four minutes back. Perhaps they would change the course of her life. She broke a sweat, but kept her calm, though she could hardly bear to think of all the time she lost, the time that was stolen from her, and the time it would take to gather her shopping, step back out into the cold and cross her courtyard. To cross that courtyard one more time.

The incident was like a snapshot of her life, lately. Since September, every day had been like this – her time was no longer her own. So many hours demanded of her at the office, so many minutes swallowed up in metro tunnels. Even her children seemed to her like a pair of small, selfish time-thieves, and though he was only there for ten days each month and spent most of those scowling and lurking in his room, Victor, her stepson, made demands on her too, which was perhaps worse still because he took up her time without even wanting to, just by being there, doing nothing, not making his bed or doing his homework, sprawled on the white sofa with his games console when she wished she could sit in that very spot for just one evening, drop her things in the hallway and settle back into the deep, white leather and let everything take care of itself.

The beeps resumed and life carried on. By the time she left Monoprix it was dark outside. At seven thirty on 20 October, the daylight had already fled. The carrier bags cut into the flesh of her fingers. People walked quickly in the cold, as if fearful. As she weaved her way deeper into the side streets the pedestrians, cars and shops shrank back, and soon the only sound was that of her heels tapping on the pavement. Sometimes she felt she would be reduced to this: the beat of passing time, the tick of footsteps fading into the night. And yet she had so much, everything she had ever wanted: responsibilities, a nice apartment, a family. It was just that since September, her whole life had begun to go wrong.

She tapped the code, pushed the carriage door with her foot and faced the dark courtyard. Thinking about it, she realised this was the only time in her day that was truly her own. That was why she needed it so badly. Before the crows had come to roost, this courtyard had been a space apart, a breath of air, a tonic; the moment she stepped out from the lodge, she left the whole city behind. Two towering trees formed a canopy higher than the rooftops, a world of deep silence and peace, a wilderness where tufts of grass grew between uneven paving stones, and bushes formed a dense shrubbery behind a low wall around the base of the trunks. Nature was gaining ground here, all too visibly.

Only the street-facing side of the old town mansion had been renovated, the side in which she lived. The buildings across the courtyard were ancient, with electric wires running along beams three centuries old, untouched since the last refurbishment, decades ago – another world, in which she never set foot. She walked through the woodland scent, skirting the scrap of greenery she could barely see because she had stopped turning on the outside light in September, when the crows arrived. She knew that if she set the light on its timer they would start their hideous cawing, screeching down from the treetops, shriller than an alarm. Just thinking about it sent a shiver down her spine. She had never been comfortable around birds, was even scared of pigeons when they came too close, so a roost of crows was unthinkable.

She had pushed through the carriage door for the first time, with Richard, eight years ago. Walking into the courtyard, she had discovered this patch of green, sheltered from the July heat. It had felt like finding a little piece of countryside in the middle of Paris. It was as cool beneath the tall trees as an air-conditioned room and, before they had even visited the apartment, she had known that this was where they would live. Because of the courtyard: a buffer between her and the outside world.

Aurore switched on the temperamental lamp in the post room cum bin store. The old light bulb glowed amber. She swept the junk mail into the bin and kept hold of the bills. As she left the room, she looked up. The leaves were rustling in the breeze, but the sound did nothing to quell her sense of unease.

She kept the light off in the stairwell too. Sometimes she dreaded she would find them on the landing, imagined seeing them on every floor. She told herself there would come an evening when she could no longer face it, when she would be so paralysed by fear that she would be unable to come home. Richard kept telling her, ‘Aurore, they’re birds; they’re probably more scared of you than you are of them,’ but she knew that wasn’t true. When they were close by, barely more than arm’s-length away, they refused to move, and fixed her with their beady eyes, challenging her. The two crows embodied all the fears that were crowding in on her, everything that was going wrong, the mounting debts, her business partner who no longer spoke to her. Since September everything had been conspiring to frighten her out of her wits.

In the city, people spend their lives making first impressions. Thousands of pairs of eyes, encountered all day long, thousands of fellow creatures who come too close; some you barely notice, others not at all. The impression Ludovic gave was of a big man. Being well-built affected the way he behaved with others. He was careful. This evening, for example, in the overcrowded bus, he was conscious that if he overbalanced even slightly, he might hurt someone, so he held on tight to the rail, because the driver seemed to enjoy making his bus, and the passengers, sway and lurch. Sitting just below him, three elderly ladies appeared tiny, some of the men too. He wasn’t sure the women were paying him any attention, but the men were definitely throwing him glances, jealous of his build – a free pass in a crowd.

A young woman climbed aboard with a baby buggy. Everyone tried to make space but still it wouldn’t fit. A recorded announcement requested that passengers ‘move down inside the bus’, and the driver left his seat to enforce the message. It was unbearably squashed now, and people were becoming impatient. Ludovic got off at the next stop. He couldn’t bear crowds, the way city people herded together. Back on the street it was the same, people pushing forward, heads down. They adjusted their course, or dodged at the last minute, to avoid bumping into anyone else. They did this automatically, whilst he still had to think about it. You probably had to have lived in Paris for a long time to move instinctively through a dense, fast-moving crowd like this, to go with the flow without having to concentrate.

Before, he had never been conscious of the impact his bulk made on other people. When he was walking in the Célé valley, on the high mountain paths or through the fields, his presence did not have the same weight. His size was insignificant in that landscape, but here, he was forever stepping to one side, making way.

At Pont National, he turned left to walk along the quais. The view was wide open, utterly unimpeded. In the city, it takes a river to open up the sky like that. Here, at least, you could see it, even by night. The Seine was the only serene, feminine aspect of Paris. Apart from that, what he saw all around him was a tough, frenetic city, a city conceived by men, the buildings and monuments built by men, the squares, cars and avenues designed by men, the streets cleaned by men, and over there, in the skatepark, hanging out in the cold, like they did under the elevated section of the metro, nothing but men … As he walked along the stone embankment, he knew the guys were looking at him. They were looking at him because he looked at them. He attracted this kind of bravado all the time. He had come from a stressful meeting in Ivry-sur-Seine, just beyond the périphérique, south-east of the centre. An hour-long wrangle with an uncooperative, devious couple who had wound him up until he was on the verge of losing his temper. But he had controlled himself. Twice he had given in to anger in similar circumstances. Twice he had blown a fuse. But he wouldn’t do it again, he was certain of that. At some point we all acquire a measure of wisdom. Still, appearing by surprise at someone’s home to present them with an unpaid bill was always a risky business. And two meltdowns in two years was a good enough record, though ‘even once could be once too many’. That was what his boss, Coubressac, had told him when he started. Coubressac had reservations at first, about Ludovic doing home visits – he had known him a long time, seen him play at club level as a rugby forward. He knew he was gentle as a lamb off the field, but he had been a pretty rough number 8, more interested in running down his opponent than in looking for the way through.

If you look strong, you need to be strong, too. At forty-six, Ludovic had lived long enough with his tough, untouchable image. But in reality, he felt crushed by the city. The move to Paris had been a sacrifice, otherwise he would still be in the Célé valley, in spite of the poor yields, and the rumours he could never shake off; in spite of the chemicals that had most likely caused his wife’s death, and the case that never came to court. He would still be living as a farmer, because it was in his blood, it was his vocation. But besides the enduring memory of Mathilde, he had to face the fact that, today, five people could not live off forty hectares of land – mostly pasture – hemmed in by the hills. It was remarkable enough that his sister and parents managed to live off it. He took pride in his sacrifice for his sister, and his nephews. He had moved out, stepped aside for his brother-in-law, but that at least meant his parents could live out their lives in peace, with no need to fret over sharing out the inheritance.

It was never easy to leave the land where you were born, especially when you own it outright. But after Mathilde’s death, and everything that was said, he could not stay. When the job in Paris had come up, he had said yes, almost as an act of defiance. The older of the Coubressac brothers had been looking for negotiators in the Paris region. He needed people he could trust, not necessarily experienced, but honest and reliable. The Coubressacs’ family firm made farm tools, and sponsored a handful of rugby teams around the Célé, including Saint-Sauveur and Gourdon. When Ludovic played in the juniors, and later at club level, the name COUBRESSAC shone out in gold letters on the donor’s plaque, at the entrance to the stadium. Thirty years ago, their oldest son had moved to Paris to start a property business, and quickly discovered the problem of unpaid invoices. He predicted that in times of crisis this could become an easy way to make money. He had been proved right. Now, in France, there were six hundred billion euros of unpaid invoices a year, in a country where most of the State budget was devoted to paying back the national debt, which just showed that debt made the world go round and the main challenge in life was either to get paid or to pay what you owed. And so Coubressac had joined forces with a lawyer to set up a debt collection agency. At first it was just the two of them, but now they employed over forty people. Only three made house visits; the others worked the phones. Debt recovery requires tact and persuasion. After two months’ legal training, Ludo started collecting. Paris was a big leap, vast and overwhelming compared to Limoges or Toulouse. It had been a rude awakening. Even though the job seemed made for him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to carry on for much longer. Already, after two years, he felt oppressed by the bad luck of others, by the way good people found themselves trapped by the credit card companies, by the muddlers who refused to pay, two utterly contrasting behaviours, both of which had the same outcome. Sooner or later, everyone had to pay their due.

Ludovic preferred to see people face to face. It was more humane, because collection by phone – sitting eight hours a day in an office, chasing up debtors, harassing them for weeks, repeating the same script in the same threatening manner – was not for him. That was why he opted for house calls. And houses were indeed what he visited most. Small, modest villas, rather than apartments, in the inner suburbs, with a name on the bell which he calmly pressed. By phone it felt more like hunting – relentless stalking, designed to panic the debtor by calling them at any time of the day, including late at night and first thing in the morning, by phoning their neighbours, their friends and family, even their workplace, so that everyone knew they owed money, just as if someone had pasted a label marked DEBTOR in the middle of their foreheads. It was harassment and they never let up until the victim cracked. It was cruel.

From reading the files of closed cases, Ludovic knew that house calls produced the best results. He would have hated to spend all day on the phone, anyway. He disliked calling anyone, even family. But more importantly he needed to be on the move, out and about. Sitting down all day would have been unbearable.

When he began debt collecting he had expected some rough cases. He was prepared to deal with near-criminal behaviour but mostly he found himself tackling people who were defeated by life. The low-paid, or the newly unemployed, who had been unable to resist the urge to spend. Sometimes people were just ill-equipped for modern life, and had been scammed or been careless. Of course, sometimes there were people who deliberately avoided paying their rent or a tradesman, if they thought they could get away with it. But they were few, sadly – because it would have so much easier to tackle only the slippery, nasty types. Better for his self-motivation, too; no risk of being overcome with guilt, or pity.

He wasn’t proud of his work, but neither did he feel he was in the pay of big business, any more than he was on the side of the debtors he chased. It wasn’t quite so clear-cut. As a debt collector he didn’t represent the big companies, only ever the sole traders, small-business owners, professionals, the self-employed. They might be jewellers, dentists, plumbers, furniture retailers, builders or architects. Service providers who had let unpaid invoices accumulate and who could not keep on top of the reminders, because getting paid had become a job in itself. They risked bankruptcy. The main reason businesses failed in France was unpaid bills. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost that way each year. And a third of the unpaid bills related to changes of address, sometimes deliberately to avoid paying. In such cases, the creditors were powerless unless they embarked on endless legal, expensive legal proceedings, with no guarantee of success. The big brands had their own debt recovery departments, and used bailiffs, not always legally, but a registered letter from a firm of bailiffs could be very effective. Even then, some debts remained unpaid. That was why Ludovic did not think of himself as a debt collector first and foremost. He told himself he was a righter of wrongs, because he felt the need to justify what he did. It was best if he just never talked about his work. And he wasn’t in the habit of opening up to people.

He had lived in Paris for two years now and still he had no friends and scarcely any acquaintances. He saw practically no one. He could manage his time however he liked, provided he attended three debriefings each month at the office. The only people he spoke to otherwise were his ‘targets’. Social contact of a sort. His one big fear was coming upon a family scene: parents with small children, a mother with a babe in arms, toddlers running about under her feet, a father out of work. In those cases, the children were always used against him, to make him feel guilty. The parents would say, ‘You can’t do this to me. Yes, I owe money, but I have four children to feed; you can’t do this to us … ’, and it hurt him to think of the children he would never have with Mathilde. And the pain did not make him kinder, more understanding. On the contrary, it made him seethe with anger and he was afraid that one day he would really go too far – not in response to a raised voice or an bad-tempered gesture, but because of some low blow, a vile attempt to elicit his pity by flaunting a family, exhibiting everything he had been denied. And so, every time he turned up outside a new door, every time he rang a new bell, he feared the worst. Experience had taught him to be very careful. Whatever happened, whatever was said, he’d had his last chance. He must not lose his temper a third time.

Before, there had been a pair of turtle doves nesting in the highest branches. On fine days you could hear them coo above the chirping of other birds, or the blackbird’s call. A soothing, refreshing sound, but this September, back from holiday, Aurore had found handfuls of beige feathers scattered beneath the trees. When she looked up, she had seen two quite different birds, intensely black. Two huge crows, their plumage gleaming like gun-metal. Since then there had been no cooing, no turtle doves. The crows had driven them away.

‘Or maybe they ate them alive … ’

‘Honestly, Aurore. Those birds are all you talk about!’

When you confide in a friend, you expect her to agree with you, to understand, without the need for explanation. Not so with Andréa. She had been living in India for the past three years, using her failed fashion label as an excuse to drop everything and start a new life in Madras. A life more authentic, apparently, more like ‘really living’. She only came back to Paris twice a year and each time they met, Aurore found her a little crazier, more irrational, no longer on her wavelength at all.

‘Life is about staying as true to who you really are as possible, and you, Aurore, are anything but a businesswoman. It’s way too cut-throat for you. It’s a dog-eat-dog world – I should know … ’

Heading back to the office, Aurore told herself she should stop talking about the birds, or everyone would start to think she was crazy. But she knew she must cross the courtyard again tonight. Even at home, she might open her windows and find them right there, in the branches outside. Even when she clapped her hands they did not fly away. She shouldn’t have to put up with this. She had read on the internet that new, bigger birds were taking over in Paris because of climate change. There were seagulls everywhere already, and now the crows had come, scaring away the sparrows and swallows. Nature seemed hell-bent on proving the survival of the fittest.

She had read, too, on a science website, that crows were among the most intelligent animals, above even primates in their ability to play tricks and display cunning. Researchers in Japan had observed them placing nuts on the road, to be crushed under the tyres of passing cars. They would wait, then swoop down to retrieve the kernels. This proof of their slyness horrified her – perhaps it was the image of the crushed shells. More than once she had consulted online forums in search of tips for scaring them away, but all she had found were wild, superstitious claims about crows as harbingers of bad luck, and the perils of living alongside them. These were backed up by legends and superstition. Crows had been put on earth to betray mankind. After all, the first creature released from Noah’s ark had been a crow that had never returned with news of the end of the Flood because it was too busy pecking flesh from the bodies beached by the retreating waters.

In a strange way, all this struck a chord with her. Since September, everything had been a source of worry. First, the two big orders cancelled by Galeries Lafayette, and then the missing shipment from Asia: 1,200 dresses, suits and bustiers had disappeared without trace. Three serious blows that had brought heavy losses. Next month they would be unable to meet the payroll, and the bank was threatening to cut her off. Any bank would do the same, of course – they weren’t interested in lending, in fact they were chasing capital for themselves, to play the markets. When Aurore asked her bank manager for an overdraft extension, she felt she was begging for handouts. Worst of all was Fabian’s reaction, so calm and unruffled she almost wondered if the whole disaster was somehow in his interest. Fabian was not only her business partner but a friend from way back when they had studied fashion together and got on so well they had launched their own company. And sure enough, for eight years, with Fabian as commercial director and Aurore as designer, everything had gone well; eight years as co-pilots at the helm, releasing two collections a year, stocked in an ever-growing number of outlets – the perfect double act. But just recently Fabian seemed to have changed. He wanted to take things to the next level, talked about high volumes and cost-cutting, seemed convinced that the only way to keep a foothold in the market was to ‘expand, and fast’. Ever since his two trips to Hong Kong and the mysterious meetings he’d held there, he had turned his attention to ‘piggyback distribution’ – using a bigger fashion group to carry them into new markets, going elsewhere in search of growth and making use of brand capital to diversify the range. He had even talked about going into handbags, or developing a perfume. Like Andréa in India, Fabian had become a completely different person. Over the years, he had become unrecognisable.

Aurore knew a lot about the fashion world. She knew that success meant seizing every opportunity, sometimes sacrificing your initial good intentions in the name of profit. It wasn’t enough to produce great designs, you also had to know how to sell them, how to position yourself, how to hang out with the right people to secure store space and press coverage. No designer succeeds by talent alone, but by the size of their contact portfolio and the people skills of their publicist. Aurore had never been naïve about this. ‘The more you tell people you love them, the more they’ll make out that they love you back …’ But Fabian was no longer interested in making clothes, only profit. On top of everything she now found herself having to manage the concerns of their six employees, who could see there was a problem and sensed Aurore’s growing anxiety.

That was why it was good to get home, why she had begun almost to long for the weekends. But last Sunday evening, one of the crows had settled on the guard rail just outside the bathroom window, barely a hand’s breadth between them when she opened it to shoo the creature away. And it had refused to move. Terrified, panic-stricken, she had lost control, hollering and rapping on the window pane to make as much noise as possible, but the crow had simply moved to a branch just a little further away, and sat peering back at her. Richard had knocked on the bathroom door to check everything was OK. Yes, everything was fine, but since then she had sworn to be rid of the birds, even if she had to get hold of some sort of scare gun – she just wanted them gone. She clung to this idea of getting them out, out, as if it would solve all her problems, restore order to every part of her life. But even if she did get rid of them, how could she be sure they would not come back? How could she know they had gone for good and that nothing else in her life would come crashing down? The only way to get rid of them forever was to kill them.

Of course, he had called on Madame Salama a second time. Last week, as she took out the battered old chequebook, he had seen it coming: the first of the series of cheques he had filled out, and which she had signed, had bounced. And worse, the bank account had been closed two years ago. Now, this evening, as Ludovic left her house, he felt stricken. Appalled at the pressure he had brought to bear, even raising his voice to the old lady who pretended not to understand, insisting she let him look inside the dresser, because he was sure there would be cash hidden there. That was where his own grandmother kept her banknotes, under the protective plastic, right at the back of the drawers. And it turned out that Madame Salama did the same. Four fifty-euro notes. But she wanted to keep her cash. She needed money to get to the hospital: it exhausted her to go on the bus and so three times a week she treated herself to a taxi. And suddenly Ludovic did not dare touch the money; the banknotes were her tickets for the journey to visit her husband in hospital. The husband who would never come back here, never again live in the comfort of his home. For as long as she needed a taxi to go and see him, which might be years, Madame Salama would need her orange banknotes.

Faced with this reality, Ludovic had sat down heavily in the armchair beside the little table and sighed as he passed his hand over his face. To ease the atmosphere he had asked for a port, and because he did not know what else to do, he turned the situation on its head.

‘Henriette, you’re going to have to help me here. I’m pleading with you – you have to help me, otherwise there’ll be trouble. Henriette, tell me, you must have another account somewhere. I’m sure you have a savings book or a post office account – everyone has one of those, don’t they, Henriette?’

That was why this evening, on leaving her house, he needed more than ever to walk. He had left her neighbourhood and followed a long suburban boulevard, one of the arteries that all end sooner or later at a porte de Paris. A bus passed him on the road, heading in the right direction, but he continued on foot through the dismal suburbs, devoid of life – apartment blocks with no shops, disused factories, ill-assorted houses. He felt suddenly very far from the Célé valley, very far from the life he had led before. Were they even part of the same world? He thought of the silence there, of the wide-open space where you could wander without seeing another soul.

Finally, Henriette had taken out her post office book, and he had started again, writing out ten cheques, each for seventy euros – the pill would be harder to swallow this time. He had filled them out one by one and she had signed them, but she had not spoken another word, as if all of a sudden she had understood that it would be better to do things his way. At least now the episode would be closed. She had many other things to worry about but she could sort this out, at least. When he got up to go, this time she did not accompany him to the door, but stayed where she was, silent in her chair, not looking at him as he left. Even more than last time, she reminded him of his mother. He felt dirty for having bled her, drop by drop, of her seven hundred euros. A little old lady! He walked fast, berating himself out loud, talking to himself in a way no one else would dare. The only advantage of being a head higher than the rest, and a good bit heavier too, was that people never remonstrated with him, even when he deserved it. The danger lay in mistaking that for a licence to behave just however he liked.

He headed down the endless boulevard, and tried to rediscover the feeling he got before a match. When you walked down the corridor from the changing room, your metal studs rang out on the concrete and you felt invincible, armoured, focused. But it didn’t work. Here, there was always someone to catch his eye: a down-at-heel woman in an exotic, cheap-looking floor-length robe, a market vendor shouting an offer at him. In these soulless suburbs even a smile was enough to catch him off guard. Paris was one of the smallest capitals in the world, contained within the near-perfect circle of the périphérique, but when you added the suburbs beyond, it became infinite, a sea of districts as far as the eye could see. And so, after walking for an hour, he climbed aboard one of the buses that had been passing him since he set out. The passengers were noisy and irritable. There was violence in the way the kids messed around, an unpremeditated aggression, the same urgent, combustible energy he had felt at their age. The difference was that he had places that could absorb the impact – tracks for his mountain bike, deserted roads, valleys all around, an environment unfazed by his adolescent outbursts. Here, youngsters were always in trouble, continually running up against something or someone in a series of endlessly reverberating shocks. Standing in the bus, he found it hard to put up with these schoolkids. They were causing havoc, they resented their confinement, and the trouble was, no one said a word. You could take them down with a joke, try to talk to them, but he didn’t feel like it today. Nor did he want to tell them off, in case they took it as provocation, in which case tempers would flare. But he knew that all he needed was to grab hold of one of them, isolate him from the rest – the little smart-arse in front of him, for example, the one swinging off the bar and kicking the other kids, while no one did anything about it, they were all getting on his nerves …

‘Stop that!’

They stared at him as if he was mad, just some weird old guy. He sensed they were testing the water, staring him down, but they chose not to take it any further.

He needed a goal now, to get back to the river. He was hopelessly adrift in a metropolis he would never understand. The Seine was his only point of reference, his one glimpse of unfettered nature, its flow like a never-ending search for the way out of Paris.

When you go from one suburb to another all day long, taking the metro, then the RER, then a bus, followed by a train, you realise that the city goes on for ever. You go from Paris to Noisy, then from Villemomble or Gagny to Nogent. The easiest way to get about is to return to the central axis each time. After a day criss-crossing Paris, Ludovic had seen enough avenues and apartment buildings, houses and intersections. Now he just wanted to see the Seine, his anchor. The presence of the great river, a stone’s throw from his apartment, reassured him that he was not totally cut off from nature. In the city, the river was the one omnipresent, unalterable element of nature. In this city, everything starts from the Seine, and everything returns to it. Like a river in the countryside, it is the origin and lifeblood of human settlement. The Arsenal was like a world apart right in the middle of Paris, a world of old stone and tranquil streets, without cafés or shops. In the evening it was as peaceful as a provincial town, and here he did not feel out of place – as if this quaint corner offered a respite from the arrogant chic that prevailed in central Paris. He had discovered that in Paris you were identified with a place, generally a street or a metro station, in Paris you told people that you lived in such-and-such an area, as if each were a village. The apartment building he lived in was beautifully renovated on the street side. But the buildings at the back of the courtyard were a different matter. There, the façade was grubby, the gutters leaked, and the inhabitants gasped from climbing the steep stairs. This building – his building – was like a tenement block from the post-war years.

An Armenian lady on the second floor had lived there since the Second World War, while on the floor above there was a seventy-eight-year-old woman who seemed almost youthful by comparison, and a little old lady who lived with her two cats. Also on the second floor, there was a woman so quiet you never knew if she was there or not, and two students sharing a one-room apartment – a couple of boys in their twenties who played very loud music. From time to time, Ludovic would yell at them to keep it down for the sake of the elderly neighbours, especially the ninety-year-old couple on the first floor, who were not in the best of health but who clung on, keeping one another alive, so that neither would be forced to leave their home.

The most striking thing in the neighbourhood – and very unusual in overcrowded Paris – was the number of empty flats, their windows never lit. In the renovated front building, there were four large apartments, two of which were rented by the week. But without air-conditioning or a lift, they were often empty. Sometimes tourists would rent them for a few weeks at a time. You could hear their wheeled suitcases when they arrived or left, bogus neighbours who disappeared as quickly as they had come. Then there would be nothing for weeks. In the left-hand wing of the front building, the apartments were not even rented out. All were empty, their owners waiting for the market to push up their value. The advantage of this was that the building was quiet. Beyond that, Ludovic never gave it a thought. Investments in square metres of floorspace, worth ten times the price of a hectare of fertile soil were beyond him, like so much else in Paris.

On his staircase the windows didn’t close properly, the stairs creaked. He had done a minimum of work in his apartment, just to make it habitable. He had patched up the central heating pipes and replaced the shower cubicle because the old one leaked. Sometimes one of his neighbours on staircase C called him for help because they saw he was good at DIY, that he had a toolbox and knew how to use it. More than once he had come to the rescue, fixed a sink that had come away from the wall in one apartment, unblocked a U-bend in another, and for the little old lady who lived next door he had even changed all her plugs, though he hated doing electrical work. He helped out his neighbours because he knew that in Paris anything that went wrong was a major catastrophe. A blocked basin, a leak, a door that refused to close immediately became a huge problem, though such things were just part of the normal run of life. Sometimes things break, they get repaired, it goes without saying. On a farm there are always things to be fixed, maintained or fiddled with. In the country, he spent his time doing just that.

His small, one-bed apartment cost him six hundred euros a month, which he found exorbitant though in fact it was a bargain. His boss had found it for him. When you worked in debt recovery there were always agreements to be struck. But when people asked him what he did, he would say he was a legal adviser. He was not naturally talkative, anyway, and certainly not with Parisians, whom he found intimidating in the extreme. They always made him feel like an outsider. It was no better in the outlying districts and towns. He was, of necessity, learning how to find his way around there, but a whole different set of codes applied beyond the périphérique, and still he did not understand them. He knew that when people saw him coming they usually took him for a plain-clothes cop, because of his trainers. Several times, gangs of wiry kids with their jeans below their backsides had challenged him, because there was strength in numbers. Groups like these wielded real power in the poorer residential suburbs and the high-rise estates alike. Anyone from beyond their neighbourhood was soon singled out, even more quickly than in the country. He would never have imagined that in a big city an unfamiliar face would be spotted faster than in a tiny hamlet, and treated with the same suspicion. Sometimes when he got out at an RER station, or walked across an anonymous, concrete concourse, he felt watched like a stranger on an evening stroll along the banks of the Célé. He felt it acutely – the instant you moved somewhere else, you were an outsider. Everyone is endlessly ‘not from around here’.

It was 9 p.m. when Aurore came through the door. After an interminable discussion with her accountant, she had left the office late and was exhausted. She wanted to step into the all-embracing darkness of her courtyard, but instead found herself bombarded with light from all sides – one lamp above the porch, another by the gate, even the one on the far side of the courtyard. It was almost unheard of for all of them to be triggered at the same time. But worst of all was the cawing, which got louder as she walked through the lodge. There was a hint of frenzy in it this evening, as if something had maddened the birds. Fractious crows were harbingers of doom according to the Romans, or was it the Greeks? She wasn’t sure. But this was just too much: some commotion in the courtyard had made the birds more agitated than ever. Sick with fear, Aurore clanged the gate shut behind her and looked towards the shrubbery. She couldn’t believe her eyes: the bushes at the foot of the trees were moving. There must be animals rooting around in there – she could hear their growls and sinister cries. Even the ivy-leaves on the tree trunks were trembling now, which made the crows caw louder still … Instinctively, Aurore charged in, swinging her bag and beating it against the bushes. She quite forgot her fear, in her determination to break up the fight and chase the furious creatures away. But it was a man who scrambled to his feet amid the foliage. She stared at him, dumbfounded, as if confronting a burglar. Leaves masked his face but she recognised him as the neighbour she disliked meeting in the courtyard, the one who eyed her with a smile that made her shiver, like the excitable crows overhead.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Ludovic would not reply in similar vein. He kept his calm. A cool head was the strongest weapon against such rude, aggressive behaviour. Up in the trees, the crows’ rasping cries were louder still, disturbed by the presence of the humans below. Their cawing took on a shriller, more hysterical pitch now. Ludovic shouldered his way out of the dense tangle of branches, emerging with twigs and ivy stuck to his sweater. As he made to step over the low wall that enclosed the miniature jungle, he raised his arms to show off his catch: two cats held by the scruff of their necks, the poor animals dangling in his grip like freshly caught vermin. He held them high, and stepped towards Aurore.

‘You can’t hold them like that. You’re hurting them!’

‘Don’t worry about them.’

‘You have no business messing around in there. It’s full of flowers which I planted.’

With the yowling cats, and the cawing crows, and this guy trampling all over her flowers, it was all Aurore could do to contain her anger.

‘I didn’t trample your flowers. I was just fetching the cats. They belong to Mademoiselle Mercier, the little old lady on the third floor. She’s been frantic with worry, thought she’d lost them, but cats are cowards, really, they never go far.’

Aurore wasn’t listening. She was busy inspecting the flowerbeds to check that her flowers and her parsley, sage and basil had survived. She was shaking with rage at this vandal. Ludovic stood watching her, still holding the cats.

‘You should give those plants some space. They shouldn’t have been put in so close to the hedge, it starves the roots. Box is toxic, you know … ’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘I know that everything needs to be cut back, even the trees – the branches are touching the roofs up there. If there was a strong wind, I hate to think what kind of damage they’d cause … ’

‘Are you one of the owners here?’

‘No, but I know a thing or two about trees.’

Unfazed, he gave her a smug, self-satisfied grin. The most shocking thing for Aurore was the sight of the cats writhing to free themselves from his grasp and scratch him, two unfortunate beasts held captive in the hands of that brute, not to mention the cawing overhead that wouldn’t stop and was as wounding to her as the man’s smile. This was the first time she had seen the neighbour up close and now she knew exactly why she had never said hello to him.

Ludovic looked up at the birds. Jokingly, he said: ‘I think you’ve annoyed them.’

‘There weren’t any crows here, before.’

‘Before what?’

‘Before … You’re the one who’s annoying them. On purpose, now, it seems.’

‘Oh, not at all, I’m a proper nature-lover. See here!’ He brandished the cats. ‘Anything that makes this much noise is fine by me – they’re so full of life!’

Aurore picked up her bags. She’d had enough of the screeching and meowing and this man in her courtyard, which had become a place of terror this evening.

‘Hold them properly. I told you, you’re hurting them.’

‘Don’t worry about them. I know what to do with cats … ’

‘Seems you know a lot about a lot of things.’

‘Less than you, by the sound of it.’

As Aurore turned and began heading towards staircase A, he called after her.

‘Know what kind of crows they are? Check their beaks – they look like carrion crows to me. They’re the worst! Far more likely to attack … ’

Aurore plunged into her brightly lit stairwell and raced up the sixty-eight steps that led to her door (if you counted the five steps up from the courtyard). Sixty-eight steps climbed in a state of utter fury, convinced she was now safe from nothing, that there was no peace even in the courtyard where she had once felt protected, and she told herself it was time to buy that pepper spray she had seen online, because she needed something to make her feel secure. She might even go so far as to spray the crows themselves, and anything else that threatened her, because this time she was ready to wipe them out, all of them, everything. No longer on the defensive. Now, she was ready to attack.