Lullaby

One evening, Louise waits impatiently for Myriam. When her boss finally opens the door, Louise practically jumps on her, eyes ablaze. She is holding Mila by the hand. The nanny appears tense, concentrated. She looks as if she’s making a great effort to contain herself, not to hop up and down or yell something. She has been thinking about this moment all day long. Her plan seems perfect to her

Like two children, lost in an adult world.

There, she will let herself be engulfed by a wave of disgust, by a hatred of everything: this apartment, this washing machine, this still-filthy sink, these toys that have escaped their boxes and crawled under the tables to die, the sword pointed at the sky, the dangling ear. She will be Louise, Louise pushing her fingers in her ears to stop the shouting and the crying. Louise who goes back and forth from the bedroom to the kitchen, from the bathroom to the kitchen, from the bin to the tumble dryer, from the bed to the cupboard in the entrance hall, from the balcony to the bathroom. Louise who comes back and then starts again, Louise who bends down and stands on tiptoe. Louise who takes a knife from a cupboard. Louise who drinks a glass of wine, the window open, one foot resting on the little balcony.
‘Come on, children. Time to take a bath.’

Then the London train arrived. Lieutenant Verdier could have walked to the carriage where Paul was sitting but he preferred to stand at the end of the platform. He watched the father of the dead children coming towards him, headphones covering his ears, carrying a little bag. He didn’t move to intercept him. He wanted to give him another few minutes. Another few seconds before abandoning him to an endless night.
The policeman showed him his badge. He asked Paul to follow him, and at first Paul thought it was a mistake.

She feels alone with the children. Children don’t care about the contours of our world. They can guess at its harshness, its darkness, but they don’t want to know anything more. Louise tells them about it and they turn away.

While she drinks, she watches Mila stare at the television screen, and she can make out, very clearly, her mother’s features beneath the mask of childhood. Those innocent, little-girl gestures are the bud containing the woman’s edginess, the boss’s severity.

Of course, all she has to do is put an end to it. But Louise has the keys to their apartment; she knows everything; she has embedded herself so deeply in their lives that it now seems impossible to remove her. They will drive her away and she’ll come back. They’ll say their goodbyes and she’ll knock at the door, she’ll come in anyway; she’ll threaten them, like a wounded lover.

Myriam is about to open the fridge when she sees it. There, in the middle of the little table where the children and their nanny eat. A chicken carcass sits on a plate. A glistening carcass, without the smallest scrap of flesh hanging from its bones, not the faintest trace of meat. It looks as if it’s been gnawed clean by a vulture or a stubborn, meticulous insect. Some kind of repulsive animal, anyway.

By becoming a father, he had acquired principles and certainties, things he had sworn never to have. His generosity had become relative. His passions had grown tepid. His world had shrunk.

As her stooped figure moves away, Louise holds Mila more and more strongly against her. She crushes the little girl’s torso until she begs: ‘Stop, Louise, I can’t breathe.’ The child tries to free herself from this embrace – she wriggles and kicks – but the nanny holds her firmly in place. She sticks her lips to Mila’s ear and says to her, in a cold, composed voice: ‘Never do that again, you hear me? Do you want someone to kidnap you? A nasty man? Next time, that’s what will happen. And even if you shout and cry, no one will come. Do you know what he’ll do to you? No? You don’t know? He’ll take you away, he’ll hide you, he’ll keep you for himself and you’ll never see your parents again.’ Louise is about to put the child down when she feels a terrible pain in her shoulder. She screams and tries to shove the little girl away from her. Mila is biting her.