The Second Woman E-Book

Louise Mey

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

AN IMMERSIVE, DEEPLY AFFECTING NOVEL ABOUT COERCIVE CONTROL AND SURVIVAL THAT TURNS ON A KNIFE EDGE - THE PERFECT LITERARY SUSPENSE FOR FANS OF LULLABY, MY ABSOLUTE DARLING AND PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN 'At once both difficult to look at and away from' Christine Mangan, author of Tangerine 'Brutal and brilliant' Jessica Moor, author of Keeper 'Astonishingly immersive and chilling' Lisa Harding, author of Bright Burning Things 'A brilliant portrayal of psychological violence and female strength' Anna Bailey, author of Tall Bones -------- Missing persons don't always stay that way Sandrine is unhappy in her body, her house and her life. But none of that matters when she meets her man. He makes room for her, a place in his home, with his son. He cares about where she is, who she is speaking to. He loves her, intensely. Everything would be perfect, if only the first woman, the one from before, would just stay away... TV RIGHTS SOLD FOR ADAPTATIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE MAISON DE LA PRESSE PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE LANDERNEAU CRIME FICTION PRIZE From a high-profile French feminist comes a noir thriller that is both a suspenseful page-turner and fiercely empathetic with victims of domestic control - not to be missed -------- PRAISE FOR THE SECOND WOMAN 'Dissects the mechanisms of psychological violence in a terribly sharp way' Marie Claire, France 'Handles the suspense brilliantly, in an atmosphere of suffocating, escalating anxiety...' Babelio 'Written by a vigilant and talented storyteller, it sends shivers down your spine' Le Parisien 'It really got under my skin. An emotionally charged ending too, which I loved - nail-biting!' Emma Curtis, author of Invite Me In 'A masterful depiction of coercive control and its far-reaching impact. An important book to be out in the world' Debbie Howells, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Vow -------- READERS LOVE THE SECOND WOMAN 'This book is immensely dark, enthralling and riveting. Sandrine is not a reliable narrator... and allows the novel to creep up on you, gradually holding you in its grip... This story will not leave you for a long time' ***** 'Creepy, paranoid, dark, compelling and very moving' ***** 'The Second Woman is absolutely phenomenal. A chilling, intense thriller, which circles around domestic abuse and controlling relationships' 'This novel had me gripped from the very first page and I couldn't put it down, losing sleep to try and finish it... It was unpredictable and the suspense had me on the edge of my seat' 'It was definitely a five-star knock-out...'

Leseprobe

‘Brutal and brilliant, The Second Woman is a razor-sharp dissection of the dynamics of coercive control. Louise Mey’s elegant prose paints a picture that is frightening and uncompromising, yet tinged with hope for a new and better world’

Jessica Moor, author of Keeper

‘Nail biting! Louise Mey is a very talented author’

Emma Curtis, author of Invite Me In

‘Dark, suspenseful, and beautifully written… masterful’

Debbie Howells, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Bones of You

‘Skilfully examines the drama, heartache – and suspense – of how to deal with someone who changed… to being abusive, violent and dangerous’

Independent

‘A pageturner which makes important points about domestic abuse’

Irish Independent

‘Handles the suspense brilliantly… A terrific discovery’

Babelio

‘Impressed us with its accuracy and its intensity’

Libération

‘Sends shivers down your spine’

Le Parisien

‘What Louise Mey realises with The Second Woman is a stroke of genius’

Causette

‘[The Second Woman] is as terrific as it is surprising’

Femme actuelle

‘Takes one’s breath away’

La vie

what readers think ofTHE SECOND WOMAN

‘A five-star knock-out’

‘Such an immersive read, you’ll look up from the page and wonder where you are’

‘Brilliantly written… I would highly recommend’

‘Moving and dark… stayed with me long after I finished!’

‘A remarkable read that will remain in my memory for some time’

‘There is so much to like… the rendering of the dynamics of abuse and the psychology of victims is insightful, nuanced and compassionate’

‘I was totally gripped… unable to tear myself away’

‘Absolutely phenomenal… chilling, intense’

CONTENTS

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1

Something has changed.

Sandrine stares into the mirror, tries to identify the shift, pinpoint what is out of place. Although, conversely and for the first time, she feels that some unknown thing is exactly where it ought to be.

She stands naked in front of the glass, dripping from the cool shower she ran, not to get clean as such, more to relieve the oppressive heat that sticks her feet to the floor.

Normally, she hates showering in summer. In winter, she is not afraid to step out of the bath: the filter of steam blurs her contours and spares the details when, despite her best efforts, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. Then, she can ignore the sluggish, sagging shape of her own body. Ignore her own existence. In summer, she washes in cold water, and the dread of her reflection stiffens her movements, hunches her spine, forces her to stare at the floor.

But something has changed, and for the first time in ages, perhaps the first time ever, she examines her reflection without loathing, only curiosity. Objective, even kindly enquiry. This envelope of flesh is the same as every other day and yet something has changed. But what, she cannot say.

Strange to look in the mirror and not feel the urge to holler and scrub herself out, cut herself into tiny pieces, dissolve. Not to mutter fat cow, fat, fat and ugly, stupid, stupid bitch. She searches inside for the scorn, the cutting words that have coursed in her veins for as long as she can remember looking at herself, but they are nowhere to be found. She gazes anew at her narrow, sloping shoulders; her small, pear-shaped breasts, flat and elusive from the first; her stomach, which has never been flat; her too-fat thighs that inflict suffering with the onset of warm weather, their skin rubbed raw by the first steps of summer, so that skirts are banished or she must end each day waddling grotesquely from her flesh-wounds. She is one of those women who wear jeans on the hottest days of the year, who quake when the season for fine, lightweight fabrics comes around. If she could, she would live in endless winter, hidden under layers of discomfort and shame. Concealed inside clothes, because that’s what you do with fat cows like her, fat, fat and ugly, stupid, stupid bitch. You hide them away.

She is still the same. But something has changed.

She puts on the nightdress he gave her. He insists she wear it. And she wants to please him. She doesn’t tell him the nightdress is too short, cut for a body that will never be hers, that the synthetic fabric sticks to her skin, that by morning the too-thin straps have cut into her shoulders. He insists, and she puts it on.

She comes out of the bathroom and feels the linoleum under her feet. It’s not late, but already the upstairs corridor is dark. September takes her by surprise, every time, with nights that nip at days still scorching with heat.

The boy’s door stands open. Invariably, he closes it – he’s a dormouse, a vole, a slow-worm, forever curled and coiled out of sight. But his father comes to check on him and leaves the door open. A silent dialogue. Sometimes, at night and through to the pink light of dawn, she hears the tiptoeing of feet across the floor, the sound of the door closing, but his father always wins and the light-footed boy retaliates by retreating to his nest, enfolding himself in his quilt, curled into a tiny ball, shielded by a fortress of duck down and soft, pastel-coloured toys. She is very fond of the boy, and the sight of him hidden among the printed trucks and footballs of his bedsheets, even on the hottest nights, brings him so terribly close, as if they were one and the same. As if he were hers.

That’s not how it is. He is not hers. He’s his father’s son, and she, Sandrine, came later. When she moved in, each time she thought of how he had come into her life with his little boy, into her fat cow’s life, fat, fat and ugly, stupid, stupid bitch, her heart would melt in her throat, at her sheer good fortune.

The corridor light is on, now. He has pressed the switch at the bottom of the stairs. A conquering shaft of yellow pushes its way into the boy’s room.

She looks at the bed. Nothing peeks out from under the sheet. The intrusive light fades into darkness across the floor. The boy likes to have a night light, but his father thinks he is too old. If Mathias doesn’t want to lie in the dark, he can leave his door open. They always leave the corridor light on. The cover rises and falls; he is breathing softly. She pulls the door delicately towards her, leaves it neither closed nor ajar. In their tiny war, she takes no sides.

She walks on, and her shadow glides along the wall to the top of the stairs. She knows the dark imprint of her body can be seen from below, from the sitting room; that if, downstairs, he wants to know what she’s doing he has only to look at the wall. She found it both strange and comforting at first, and sometimes she wondered if this was his night light, of sorts – the knowledge that she was there and what she was doing. He showed such concern: for her movements, where she was from one minute to the next. She felt she was eagerly awaited, protected, needed. A new, warm feeling that pulsed in her veins after so long alone, living for no one but herself.

A floral shirt lies over the stair-rail. He bought it for her at the market. She never buys clothes on a whim; decades of fitting-room catastrophes, emotional landslides swallowed down in silence, have left her immune to shopping on impulse.

But he liked the shirt. It was pretty, he insisted. That summer, he wanted to see her in delicate, lightweight fabrics. She would try to resist, say nothing, but often she gave in.

She pays careful attention to her clothes. Her soft, lardy silhouette allows no margin for error. She needs no one’s advice now, not even the wardrobe experts who say figures-of-eight should cinch their waist, and pear-shapes should emphasise their neckline. A heap of slush, that was her body-shape, not one you see in the pages of a magazine, and she had learnt slowly, painfully, to choose things that corrected her defects as best they could. She wore structured tops with sharply defined shoulders to compensate for her neck that slid straight down to her too-fat arms. Loose-fitting blouses to hide the fat that rolled in waves over her stomach, a tide that refused to turn, however obstinately she exercised, however violently she starved. High-waist jeans that she ordered specially and got adjusted by hand. They were expensive. She had only a few pairs.

She had tried the shirt on; decided she looked repulsive. That was yesterday. She had left it there, on the wooden stair-rail, not daring to touch it again. He didn’t want her to give it away, and they couldn’t take it back. She looked nice in it, he said. It’s a present. I’d like to you have it. Wear it.

And so she picks up the shirt to take it down to the utility room – you never know who’s tried it on, where it’s been. Best to wash it first.

Normally, the feel of a hostile garment would floor her completely. She had composed her daily uniform with such care all these years because dressing was torture, the one thing worse than being naked. The day her mother persuaded her to try a skirt that was too small, she had dug her nails into her hips until she drew blood. Her mother knew the skirt would be tight, she just wanted to see her daughter bent double, red with shame at the unbreachable barrier of her pudding thighs. Clothes were enemies to watch for and hold at bay. She had wept, and binged, and vomited and drunk over the trying-on of clothes that did not fit. But he has insisted she wear the shirt, since yesterday, just as he insisted all summer that she wear ‘something different’. ‘Something different’ from the uniform body-armour she had developed for so long. He told her over and again the shirt would look pretty, until she agreed to try it on. She had looked at herself in it: a fat, ugly cow. That was just after coffee, but the shame of being herself had gnawed inside until evening. And yet he said it suited her.

He doesn’t like things left lying around, so she will wash the shirt and see. She takes a deep breath, picks it up by the yoke (too narrow, too shapeless) and holds it at arm’s length. Ordinarily, she would rather die than put the thing on. But no. Because truly, something has changed. She doesn’t know what, but she wants not to think about it, with all her might.

She comes downstairs, concentrating on the feel of the floor against her skin, the soft, dry wood that prints its narrow grain on the soles of her feet. So as not to think about the mirror she hadn’t wanted to smash, the shirt that is just a harmless piece of fabric dangling in her grasp. So as not to think about what has changed, the thing she doesn’t want to frighten away. She thinks, instead, that the stairs are dusty, she should have taken the vacuum cleaner out when she got home, she’ll do it tomorrow.

She knows she will see him as soon as she reaches the ground floor, his gaze turned expectantly towards her, every time. At first, his eager anticipation had flooded her with warmth, tingled the top of her stomach, almost between her breasts.

But he has not turned around. For the first time, he is not looking out for her.

He is sitting in the same armchair as always, in front of the TV, but he hasn’t turned to watch her come downstairs. Night has fallen and the sitting room is bathed in the blue light emanating from the big screen.

The melody of the evening news, voices whose song follows no known logic, placing full stops where they’re least expected, framing questions that are not. The sound is low, but she can hear the voice of a journalist who says that More rarely? As well as patients suffering from Alzheimer’s and other degenerative memory disorders? Paris’s Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital treats people who have. Quite simply. Forgotten who they are. People like this woman?

She draws nearer. The voice continues, says that Madame X arrived at the Pitié just a few days ago. From Italy, where she spent more than a year. During which she never spoke, until suddenly, she began to speak in French? And when Sandrine stands beside the armchair, he turns to her, his face gleaming with sweat, though it’s not warm in the sitting room, they had closed the shutters against the sun. Now is the time to open them and let in the cool night air. She is about to ask if that’s what he wants, if she may open them. This is his home, and she always asks, despite the bowl decorated with her name in the breakfast cupboard, her shoes in the hallway. She doesn’t dare say ‘our home, my home’. But his mouth is open to speak, so she says nothing. He says: It’s her. It’s her.

His voice is toneless, unfamiliar. Sometimes, when he disapproves, his speech becomes strained, even alarming, as if a horrid, stiff rope is strangling his words. But this is something different.

‘Who? Who’s “her”?’ Sandrine asks.

On the screen, a woman’s face. She has dark brown hair and regular, neatly drawn features. She smokes a cigarette and leans against a pillar in a tree-lined courtyard. The place looks old and imposing. Her long, slender neck casts a shadow that catches at her collarbone, her thin shoulders. Her breasts are round. She lifts the cigarette to her lips, showing the finely delineated muscles of her forearm.

The woman on the screen is everything that Sandrine is not, but she has known that for a while now. The woman on the screen is framed in yellow, in a photograph on the dresser.

Shipwrecked, drowning, Sandrine glances wildly back and forth, from frame to screen, screen to frame, clutching at one last hope, perhaps it’s not really her, it’s impossible, she’s dead, she disappeared, melted into thin air, she’s the empty space in the bed, the absent mother.

‘Who?’ Sandrine asks again, as if pretending she doesn’t understand could change anything, cancel the moment, as if acting like there’s nothing wrong can help her now, even as she sinks to the bottom, even when it’s too late; and already, she pictures herself alone again, in the small apartment where she had waited to come alive, preserved in readiness through the long, slow absence of a man, her man.

No, worse than alone. But what could be worse? She knows what: rejection and exile. He will throw Sandrine out, because the other woman is alive. If she is alive, she will come back. If she comes back, he will leave her. Leave Sandrine. There had been one vacant post, and she has lost it now. He will get rid of her, the fat, ugly cow.

‘Her.’

He doesn’t dare speak the name.

Neither does Sandrine.

But on the screen and in the yellow picture frame, the same dark eyes devour the light, the boy’s mother, the woman who was there before, the woman who was there first.

The first one. The first woman.

2

What will he do? What should they do?

The journalist’s voice says that Anxious to discover her identity? The woman has been assisted since her return to France. By the police. Who are searching the accessible data on persons reported missing in suspicious circumstances in recent years. And of course. The team at the Centre for Cognitive and Behavioural Disorders is constantly. At her side. Helping her to recover the memories her mind has suppressed. The mystery should hopefully, soon? Be resolved. Join us for another Tale of the Unexpected tomorrow – a journey to the heart of the Paris sewers.

What are you going to do? Sandrine asks.

He says nothing at first, sits as if drawn into the screen. The subject is closed, and anyone entering at that moment would see a couple as if turned to stone in front of the evening weather forecast, outlook fine for tomorrow, temperatures above average for the time of year.

She stares at the top of his scalp. She remembers the first time she told him she loved his head, his hair, that she loved all of him. That she moved to press her lips into his hair, breathe its smell, kiss his head; she doesn’t do that any more, he doesn’t like it. He’s losing his hair, a slight bald patch on top, and thanks her not to talk about it, not to mention it, dislikes it when a breath of evening air, a kiss, reminds him of its existence. But it touched Sandrine to see the delicate skin laid bare, little by little. She explained that she wished she had known him before, that she had always known him, and that she loved to watch him change. To observe the passage of time in this man, whom she loved. It anchored her to a point on his lifeline, into which she had come so recently, so late. The small, warm, naked patch told her over and over again that she was really there, they were really together, that she really lived in this house, with this man and his little boy, both of whom had been missing a woman’s touch.

Sandrine had met him because a woman was missing. His wife.

The first woman had disappeared. She had seen it on TV, heard it on the radio: when the first woman had failed to come home, he had appealed for help. He was with the woman’s parents, the woman’s son, the four of them grouped around an empty space. He was crying and the sobs in his voice had touched Sandrine deeply. A man who cried. She had felt a wave of sorrow sweep over her, she thought, poor man, poor man, and his poor little boy, and those poor parents who had lost their daughter.

The pain she felt for them was lesser, because she had no knowledge of the sort of parents who would plead for their daughter’s return. No one had ever pleaded for her. She had always been awkward, an embarrassment, too soft and feeble, too slow. They hadn’t thrown her out, but they never liked the sight of her around the house either – something she had always known. He with his loud voice and brusque gestures, whenever Sandrine got in his way; she with her sinuous, serpentine way of talking, her staring eyes and dry skin, like some species of reptile. Sandrine had never known loving parents, and so she could not imagine their distress.

But he, the man who cried in front of the cameras – he whose heart had been torn out all at once, who found himself suddenly missing the other half of his universe – she knew exactly what he was feeling. Straightaway, she had recognised her twin in pain and sorrow, she who had so much love to give, to a person unknown; she who felt the void that gnawed at the pit of her stomach. She knew someone was missing in her life, and when she saw him, she knew he was that someone, the man who cried. Their sorrows were reflections in a mirror.

He was devastated, he fought and stifled his sobs, and the parents-in-law had stepped up to the microphone. The family was organising a White Walk, they had to do something, the inaction was killing them, and they invited anyone who wished to join them. He had stepped back as they spoke, his broad, heavy man’s hands on the shoulders of the small, expressionless boy.

She had taken part in the Walk. Even now, she has no idea where she had found the courage. The shy one, the spare wheel, the one her friends put up with and asked along, the one you remember when you need help moving your stuff, the one you forget on the guest list for a party. When she saw him cry on TV, it had been years already since anyone had needed her help moving house, years spent with no one but herself, nothing but her work, her small apartment, her car. Years when she had been unable even to embrace the cliché and surround herself with cats, because they made her throat sore and her skin itch.

She filled her life carefully, swimming on Saturday morning, then the market, meals to prepare for the week, plenty of fresh vegetables – she was watching her weight – then books, lots of books, until it was time to go to bed.

On Sundays she always got up too early. She would have loved to be one of those people for whom sleep is an activity in itself, who could spend all weekend snoring in a semi-coma – but no. At eight o’clock in the morning, sometimes earlier, very often earlier, she was awake, in the empty apartment that echoed with nothing but the cries of the children from the floor above. She hated the noise. She would get straight out of bed and put on the radio, loud, a music station. Then she would take the car to some unlikely event, a bric-a-brac sale where she would find nothing to buy, some obscure museum. She had gone into a pet shop once, but ran out moments later with the urge to vomit, the animal reek of despair was so strong she could taste it.

On Mondays she would return to the office, mimicking her colleagues’ yawning reluctance, concealing her secret delight at the prospect of five long days at work that would shield her from the unbearable tête-à-tête with her own self. Weekday evenings were easier, she often arranged a trip to the supermarket, then there was her shower, and her lengthy, meticulous grooming, the nightly, acrobatic contortions so that she could shave her legs. She applied cream, too, with great diligence and care. Anti-cellulite cream, belly-fat cream, stretch-mark cream, blackhead cream, cream to prevent bags under the eyes. There were things to be dissolved, melted away, and things to be encouraged: a separate shelf was devoted entirely to magical potions that would firm the flesh of her breasts, tone her neckline, plump her too-thin lips. Then dinner, lots of fresh vegetables – she was watching her weight – and then she would watch a film, chosen with care and precision. She had watched romantic films until she felt quite sick, she detested their nauseating sentimentality, preferred films that smashed things up, explosions, battle scenes, films where the love interest was a pretext or a reward, not the journey itself. She had lost patience with the path to romance, the one she could never find, never take, and so she would curl up in front of a mindless action movie, and that would see her through to bedtime.

The woman’s disappearance had not caught her attention at first, though it had made the regional TV news. Sandrine had half-heard it and permitted herself some mildly wicked reaction: ‘So much for having it all,’ as if a woman’s abduction was somehow the price for her perfect life, husband, child, house. Or ‘How stupid, to go running alone in the woods,’ though she knew it was unfair to judge. She knew, too, that life was turning her sour.

She watched out for that now, because she had noticed it more than once, the petty, snake-like cruelty, the slow pulse of her tainted bloodline. She had discovered it by chance. The car had broken down one day, and she had taken the bus to work. The one time she had no need to fake the show of tiredness and irritation on arrival at the office, because the bus had taken an hour to cover the journey she made in twenty minutes by car. A couple had sat down in front of her. He was very short, overweight, and the rolls of fat around his neck were coated in thick brown hair that sprouted from beneath his shirt collar. The synthetic fabric had bobbled, and was tucked carefully inside his trouser belt, worn too high. At his side, his companion. She, too, was overweight, and flaccid, sitting with her breasts resting on her belly, which rested on her thighs, clad in a flowered skirt that clashed with her striped polo-necked jumper. They smiled at one another and exchanged small, kind words as they stroked one another’s hands. They were ugly, hideously dressed, and happy; she had hated them from the very depths of her soul, bolt upright in her seat, her mouth twisted in disgust, and when she rose to get off the bus, she had shot them a reproachful, scornful look, as if they were doing something wrong – as if they themselves were wrong. The girl had sensed it and looked up at her. Instinctively, the young man at her side had gripped her hand more firmly, and the hate had almost escaped from Sandrine’s mouth, she had almost done what had been done to her so many times, when strangers called her Fat and Ugly (‘You should go on a diet, young lady’, ‘Sure you need that ham sandwich, Piggy?’). She had almost said something nasty in turn, after all why not, the two of them were far uglier than she was and no one had ever thought twice about hurting her. But she had stopped herself just in time. That’s not you, that’s not you, don’t do it, you’re a nice person.

And with difficulty, she had summoned a thin, polite smile that reassured the girl with her ugly skirt and her pasty face spilling out over the polo neck. The ugly, happy girl with her ugly, happy young man. Sandrine could have slapped her. Stepping down from the bus, she took a deep breath, but the acid sensation in her throat provoked a grimace that stayed with her until she reached the office.

And so Sandrine had added nastiness to the list of things she needed to watch. Because she knew she could not be nasty, no one can afford to be nasty as well as ugly.

So it was that when she first heard the news – the news about the woman who had disappeared, the woman who had gone running and never returned – she had thought bad things, and corrected herself, and let the news item pass unnoticed. But people had talked about it for a long time, the parents had gotten involved – in fact, they were the ones who had reported the woman missing and alerted the media. The man who cried was too broken.

Unless he did it. Killed his wife… her colleague Béatrice had suggested one day during their lunch break, as they all ate the contents of their Tupperware boxes in the communal kitchen.

Forty-five minutes, not long enough to go out, not long enough for a shy person to form any real connection. Sandrine never spoke much at lunch, there was barely room for girls like her, the quiet ones, unused to spouting their opinions unabashed, the way men did. That morning, the day of the family’s press conference, a week after the woman’s disappearance had found its way onto the regional TV news, they had all been given their first sight of the tearful husband, the desperate parents, the little boy with his crumpled features.

No! The word had burst out of Sandrine’s mouth, before she could do anything to stop it, and her face had turned scarlet, embarrassed by her sudden conviction. How would you know? her colleague retorted when the moment of surprise had passed.

Nothing. Sandrine didn’t know anything. She felt it, was all.

And on Sunday, the day of the White Walk, she had woken up, and without a second thought she had taken the car to the town where the missing woman lived, not wanting to admit that she was going there to find the man who cried.

There were a lot of people. Family, and friends. Busybodies, too, and people who were genuinely concerned, and others, like her, whose motives were less clear – and Sandrine thought to herself that it was strange to come and share this desperate anxiety that was not her own. She felt like a thief, a sham.

Dressed in white, the parents of the missing woman were handing out photographs. She hadn’t seen the husband at first, the man who cried and who had touched her so deeply. Only the parents, and she remembered that expression, one she had read a hundred times and never understood, the look of ‘urgent despair’ that she noted now in the couple’s tense animation. They were in their early sixties, perhaps slightly younger. They moved about constantly, from one group to the next, holding photographs of their daughter, and Sandrine understood that they were looking for her. That they were still looking for her. It was four weeks since their daughter had vanished as she ran on the path through the forest, the path she ran along every day. But they were still looking for her. With the urgent energy of despair. That was before the woman’s clothes had been found, and her shoes. For them, the White Walk was not a commemoration, it was a search party. Sandrine heard them tell someone beside her that the cops had stopped searching. Or weren’t looking in the right places. That people were giving up, that already, the story was getting less coverage in the papers and on the news.

Sandrine had stood, hesitant, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. It was cold, and her breath sent timid clouds into the air. When she caught a stranger’s eye, she showed a small, kind smile, concerned and compassionate. I’m here to help, she told herself. I’m here to help.

At last, they all set off, walking away from the cul-de-sac of small, neat houses. There were about sixty people, maybe more, quite a crowd. That was what it looked like, she told herself – a protest. Sluts, her father used to say, during her years at the lycée; sluts walking the streets with filth and rabble, you can watch your face, my girl, if you start running with that crowd. And so, when the other students were skipping class, waving their makeshift placards, hating the system, Sandrine had been the one who stayed behind, alone in the room set aside for study periods. One evening, on TV, a close-up shot had showed some of her classmates, girls out in front with the word ‘NO!’ scrawled in lipstick across their cheeks, the boys marching either side. Her father had said, Just look at those filthy little sluts, if I catch you doing that one day you just watch your face, and she had felt relieved and furious to have missed the march, because she was already watching out for her face, some evenings, when he’d been drinking and she had breathed too hard, so she might just as well have gone along. But no, Sandrine had stayed huddled all alone in the study room, and when the controversial government bill had passed into law and things had gotten back to normal she was the girl who never went on the marches, the manifs. She was the traitor, the reactionary.

On this Sunday, the day of the White Walk, she had hesitated until the very last minute: should she follow the column threading through the wood that began at the end of the cul-de-sac, or turn around? It would be almost lunchtime when she got home, and half a Sunday vanquished. She shifted on the spot, uncertain, until she was almost alone in the cul-de-sac, unsure which way to walk.

And then the door of one of the houses opened and the little boy came out, the same little boy she had seen on the television, and behind him, emerging from the shadows, his father, the man she had seen cry and who had broken her heart.

That evening, in bed, she had tossed and turned. Sandrine the shy one, the quiet one, asking herself how she had found the courage to go and speak to them, to walk towards the man who cried and his son, but she had done it, she had done it, she told herself over and over, cheeks still burning, her skin strangely electric. She had spoken to them and they had taken the path through the woods together. She said, I came to… to offer my support. And he had said, Ah, that’s kind of you, in a toneless, indifferent voice as he locked the door behind him. Then she had said, It must be terrible for you, I’m so sorry.

And he stopped staring at his hand as it fiddled with the key in the lock and he had looked at her, at Sandrine.

That night, Sandrine had tossed and turned in the warmth of his gaze, until finally she stripped naked between the sheets. He had looked at her.

She knew two kinds of look, just two kinds of male gaze: the one that checks you all over and tosses you aside, and the one that checks you all over and decides it feels hungry. Indifference, or a predator’s threat, nothing else, all her life.

The indifferent eyes were many, looking her over like a master butcher assessing a carcass, quick to decide, lingering at her breasts, her thighs, then up to her face, then sliding away to another place, something in the distance – a shop window, or another woman. She would be judged inadequate, insufficient, or too much. Those stares left her wounded and relieved in equal measure. Sometimes, the men who didn’t like what they saw made a grab for it nonetheless, felt her with hard, greedy hands; pinched her, caught hold of her, worked her flesh like dough; and then her heart would race in her chest, and she would be overcome with fear and panic. If she was lucky, the men behaved like that only in passing, then forgot all about her, while she was left in a fevered, exhausting state that lingered for days after. One day, she had seen a woman turn on one of those men who had touched her without asking, heard her scream the words WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? I DON’T GIVE A FUCK, YOU SAY YOU’RE SORRY RIGHT NOW OR I’M CALLING THE POLICE! and Sandrine had watched the scene, open-mouthed; could you, could they do that? Could women react, lash out, object? Could they resist the barbarian hordes, refuse their bodies, defend themselves? Sandrine had stared at the woman, with her tiny, mouse-like frame, and she had been afraid the man would hit her. He almost did, but the woman refused to shut up, she had stood her ground, and her cries had drawn people out from the shops onto the street. Two elderly ladies were walking towards them, with their poodles, the dogs had barked, and other men had arrived on the scene. The man said OK, OK, shut your mouth, and walked away. The woman had trembled all over, but she held her head high, she must have been one of the girls Sandrine’s father told her about, the sluts who made trouble for everybody, and Sandrine had learnt never to make trouble in her world, she was a good girl.

Her father was not a part of that world, anyway. Her father was the first to teach her that indifference was a blessing, even as a child. When he peered into her face, he was looking for something she should spit out, and she always did. He hated her vacant expression, her mouth always full – you’re fat enough – her school marks in literature and writing, Who cares about that, fucking waste of time, what about the school teams, you get fucking nowhere in sport and you expect us to clap our hands? He would rumble on like that for hours, often ranging far back over the course of her life, while buttering a piece of bread, leafing through the TV schedules, keeping up the brutal stream of words. She would listen, huddled tighter and tighter into herself, learning never to answer back, never to object, balled tightly around that part of her that was not entirely broken, trying to keep it intact, though it shrank, year after year, until now there was almost nothing left.

She had managed to get away. She hadn’t tried that hard, it was pure luck: the job she had found after completing her training was too far away to commute each day. She had feared her father would not let her accept the offer, but his expression had reverted to indifference, at last. Well… er, go then. Go. Think we’d try and stop you? You raise them up and then off they go, just like that. Fuck it. He told her she’d be off ‘strutting about’, which meant ‘acting like a whore’, and her mother nodded silently, as always. Sandrine said nothing, she just wanted to leave, and leave she did, at exactly the right time, because since her breasts had begun to form, too late, too flat, too small, her father’s eyes had turned hungry, too, and he hid it less and less and Sandrine dreaded things so terrible she could not put them into words.

She encountered plenty of hungry men, there was something in their scavengers’ eyes, something cruel, a craving, nothing more. They would grab her in the street, on the bus, make wet, squelching sounds, get out their sex, gorged with violence. She would freeze, speechless, like a frightened animal, or walk faster to get away, tearing her feet from the ground, heavy with shame, each step a superhuman effort.

At the supermarket she had met a cashier who seemed nice, who had long conversations with her, flowery words, soft-spoken. She had agreed at last to go with him to the cinema, and he had fucked her like a sack, in the car, exactly as her father had said they would, it had been painful and dirty and he had buttoned himself up again straightaway and left her alone in the cinema parking lot. The next day she had gone to his checkout, just to know, to understand, and he had ignored her, but two shelf-stackers had whispered as she walked by. She had changed supermarkets after that.

She had let other guys try their luck, she was prepared not to mind what they did to her body if they liked her as a person, in exchange, even though in the romances she watched back then, it was always beautiful and gentle, and the sheets were always fresh. One of them had told her, eventually, that he wouldn’t introduce her to his friends because she wasn’t his type, what he really liked were beautiful women. Another had ended it after two ugly nights when he had called her late, and drunk, and then nothing.

But on that Sunday, the man in the blue shirt had looked up and into her eyes. Neither hungry, nor disgusted – something new. And he had smiled.

Later, she told him she had fallen in love with him then and there, the moment he smiled, though perhaps that wasn’t true, perhaps it was just beforehand, when he looked at her first; or perhaps that was wrong too, perhaps she had loved him forever, he, the first man to look at her with kindness in his eyes, before breaking into a smile. She never kept anything from him, he was so worried she might be hiding something, he needed so badly to know that she was telling him the truth, the whole truth, keeping nothing back, it made her happy to feel that he wanted to know everything. What she told him was no lie, it was just that she honestly didn’t know, and anyway it really didn’t matter.

It must be awful for you, I’m so sorry, she had said, again, that Sunday, encouraged by his smile. He said, That’s kind of you. And his voice was exhausted. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. The face of a man who had reached rock bottom.

The little boy stood silently on the doorstep, scratching his elbow with thin, sharp fingers. Sandrine saw the marks gouged in his soft skin. He stared at his feet and made no effort to hold his father’s hand, and when Sandrine spoke to him, he gave no reaction.

What’s your name? His father said, The lady’s asking you a question, and the little boy was startled out of his thoughts and mumbled: Mathias. Hello, Mathias, said Sandrine to the little boy, who said nothing more in reply. Have you come for the Walk? asked the father, walking towards her, stepping down from the porch, his hand around the boy’s wrist.

Suddenly, she panicked: what should she say? ‘No, not really, I came because I saw you cry on TV and I felt so sorry for you.’ Her body behaved as usual: fingers twisting together, hiding her stomach, forehead flushing deeply, voice stammering. She hated moments like these. Each time, she dreaded the sound of her father’s voice: ‘Say something, dammit, no one’s going to eat you, how hard is it to answer a simple question, eh? Huh? Stupid girl. Unbelievable. Shut up then, if you’ve got nothing to say for yourself.’

But no. No, he looked at her again, her hands all knotted with shame and embarrassment, the red flush rising from her neck, descending from her forehead, while she said I… It’s… because… and he had saved her, with a small gesture, an arc of the palm of his hand, as if wiping a slate clean. He had saved her with two words: I understand.

For the first time in her life, she was glad that someone had spoken in her place, happy for someone to interrupt her hesitant words. He’s kind, she told herself, with a feeling of relief that broke over her like a wave, he’s kind. They had walked together, the three of them, through the wood, the last link in the chain, while up ahead, the band of do-gooders wound its way through the trees and along the path.

The weather was fine that afternoon, rays of pale sunshine touched the dead leaves that shone like heaped treasure. The boy walked in silence, followed by Sandrine, and lastly his father. He had asked her about herself, her work. She said, Oh, it’s not very interesting, but he was sure it was, he asked in detail about what she did, her colleagues, their names, were they nice? He enjoyed hearing about it. She understood that he was desperate to talk about something other than his wife’s disappearance: tiny considerations, insignificant things, and she had confided in him with disconcerting ease, how the law firm was organised, the other secretaries, the room they used for breaks, the conversations, her own silences (a little), her lunch boxes and salads, she liked cooking. She broke off frequently, ashamed of her misplaced babble on this search for his wife, but each time he urged her to go on, in the woods that rustled with the careful passage of the people walking ahead of them.

They had come full circle, and when they emerged at the opposite end of the cul-de-sac, an odd-looking couple had stared at them. A woman and a man, silent, possibly hostile. She was thin, almost gaunt, wearing a leather jacket and a woollen sweater; she had a thigh gap, and she stood bolt upright, her feet in lace-up boots that Sandrine thought rather manly. She was carelessly but very comfortably dressed. He was good-looking, with a touch of grey at the temples, high-rise trainers, filthy now with the damp soil of the wood. Ordinarily, Sandrine would have had thoughts. Jealous, small-minded thoughts: a figure like that and all she does is dress like a man. But this time, nothing. She thought nothing at all. Even the persistent stares directed by the two strangers at their unlikely trio left her unscathed. She was so happy, and so busy hiding the fact. Her joy was like an insult hollered aloud in the middle of the anxious crowd.

He had grasped the little boy at the neck, his big hand comforting on the puny shoulders. He excused himself and walked off to join his missing wife’s parents, the couple she had seen handing out flyers earlier that morning. She turned and walked back to her car. She was happy, and ashamed.

At home she had taken off her shoes, her jacket, and put on her softest things. Her everyday pyjamas were not soft, she chose shapewear: leggings designed to flatten the stomach, padded, structured bras, all carefully chosen and matched. Armour against the dread of an accidental glimpse of her reflection, the very thought of which filled her with horror.

But that Sunday, she had dug out the soft, indulgent fabrics that normally she allowed herself only when she was ill. Long, shapeless jogging pants that made her flat, broad backside sag even further, a big T-shirt that hid her flaccid chest, a huge gilet in soft wool that had come to her from her grandmother, a dear, gentle woman, sweet as honey, whose memory comforted her when a small voice whispered sometimes in her ear that there was no escaping the bonds of blood, that her nasty comments and cruel thoughts were no mistake, but the expression of her innermost nature, which would gradually, inescapably reveal itself over time, however hard she tried to block the slow transformation. She had curled up on the sofa, snuggled in the gilet, like a warm, soft embrace, and watched the films she had banished, romantic comedies, dripping with misunderstandings and kisses on station platforms. Her stomach rumbled but she felt unable to eat, and finally went to bed without supper, pressing her hands to the warm flush between her legs, imagining the caress of soft palms, the long embraces that would make her feel like a queen.

Next day, her alarm sounded, and the state of grace lasted just a little bit longer, a tiny bit longer, until she saw herself in the mirror. And all at once, her body had slumped, her shoulders slouched and weary. She was still herself, still ugly, and fat, a great, big, fat cow, fat and ugly, stupid, stupid bitch. She was just herself, and he had smiled and talked to her because he was kind, and nothing more.

She had pushed the memory away, like an old piece of clothing you never want to see again, pushed to the bottom of a drawer. Padlocked. She had imagined things, it was an illness, a disease, cause and effect, it had unleashed images that fired more than her imagination. She felt pathetic, pitiful, an old maid who let herself get carried away because a man had spoken to her once, and smiled. And so now you’re going to marry him, adopt the boy and God knows what else, you stupid, fat bitch, poor cow, poor ugly cow, you poor, stupid bitch, staring for hours at stupid, mindless films, fingering yourself to thoughts of an almost complete stranger just because he cried on TV and happened to give you a smile. Stupid, stupid, you’re nothing, nothing, nothing at all. She had locked it all away and for days, weeks, whenever she saw his face, the face of the man who had come out of the small, neat house, a bolt of shame would leave her rooted to the spot. The memory had gripped her several times over, bursting obstinately from its locked drawer, while she was sitting on the toilet, or standing in front of the fridge in the break room at work, or at home chopping vegetables. And she had groaned under the burden of shame.