Sitting on the terrace of the Café de France, Séverine is waiting. She’s on edge and that irritates her. Charlotte is coming, only Charlotte, so no point torturing her keys to the point of crushing the white rabbit hanging from the key ring. No point in checking her hair in her reflection and smoking four cigarettes only to crush them half-finished. Luckily, the owner of the café is ogling her, smiling, and she likes that; she’s not twenty any more, so she must be grateful for what she can get.
Séverine did have her moment of glory, twenty years ago – twenty! She and her mate Sabrina had it, at the Privilège, the only nightclub in the region. It was so easy, with everyone’s bodies so close. They existed in their flesh, electric – and played at being hard to get, while actually it wouldn’t have taken much if they’d been handled differently. Just a little gentleness, a compliment, maybe some interest.
Their trick – hers and Sabrina’s – was to dance glued to each other. Not exactly groundbreaking but as effective as the beginning of a porn film. Hair in their faces, shoulders bare, they would writhe under the lights every Saturday night. Séverine’s parents allowed her. Youth had to have its way, after all. Her mother would sometimes worry about her getting home at night; it was about eighteen miles from the farm to the club, which was in an industrial district of Avignon. She’d always check what state the driver was in before letting Séverine go, but the driver is never drunk on the way there. They’d turn up at the farm, reeking of gel or perfume, with sparkling teeth and bracelets and a mouthful of polite Good evening, Madames. She would let her daughter go. Her husband stayed in the background, as if this didn’t really concern him. Sometimes, brutal and arbitrary, he’d make Séverine go and change if he thought she looked too sexy. But usually he was busy doing something else when she had to leave – counting crates of apples again, yelling at a worker or fixing the sulphate sprayer.
And yet there were problems sometimes. David and his cousin Jérémy had an accident one night, at the junction between the start of the main road to Marseilles and the access road to Cavaillon. The car had hit the barrier and ended up on the bank of the Rhône. It took the firefighters hours to get them out of there. After six months in a coma, David woke up a vegetable. For the last twenty years, he’s been drooling, his face all skewed, wetting himself without even noticing. In the beginning his mother would take him out in a wheelchair but he’d start screaming, a heartbreaking sound, so she stopped. Now she just leaves him in front of the TV and he makes slobbering, grunting sounds of excitement at some of the programmes. The first few years, Jérémy would visit regularly. He’d been luckier: broken bones, but he’d recovered. He’d sit next to him, smoking a joint and talking to him a little, not much – stupid news snippets, like who was fucking who, or telling him about a funny film. The jokes would fall limply at his cousin’s feet, which were turned inwards and tucked into sneakers that would never be anything but new. He’d stopped visiting because of his aunt, who couldn’t stand to see him any more. Her eyes, full of reproach and distress – he was the one who had been at the wheel, blind drunk – drove him crazy. And actually it was a relief not to have to visit any more. Séverine remembers him going to work in Marseilles after that. She hasn’t seen him for years, even though she was quite fond of him. Not as much as David, but he was all right.
When the boys would come to pick up Séverine – those old enough to drive – they’d turn down the stereo as they got onto the path leading up to the house. They’d also slow down, stifle their excitement, the urge to yell at the top of their voices that it was their turn tonight to try and hit the jackpot: to score with Séverine or Sabrina. Undress one of them on the back seat of the car. Just picturing it would fill them with unbridled, wild euphoria, and they’d be yelping like ferrets in the smoke-filled car. They’d agree beforehand which of the two would have which girl, as if it was in any way up to them. They had to calm down once the house was in sight, becoming so-and-so’s sons, apologetic teenagers asking permission. Sometimes one of them would get his way, and the lucky winner would then talk about it for weeks, or just be content walking around with his arm around one of them, a proprietorial hand above her buttocks.
And then there was also Charlotte, who used to hang out with Séverine and Sabrina. The trio from hell. The boys had more trouble with Charlotte, who was too much hard work, and who’d arrived here halfway through her adolescence. To start with, she wasn’t local, so it was obvious she couldn’t always read their code. They didn’t feel quite the lords of the manor with her, more like country bumpkins. Charlotte’s parents weren’t as lenient, so she had to climb over the wall to go with her friends. She was also more skittish, and even if the boys were ready to picture her naked in their arms, they weren’t as willing to try their luck with her. The three girls were inseparable, smoking their cigarettes glamorously in the middle of the dance floor or coming out of school, laughing at everything, mocking like hyenas. Eventually, Charlotte had gone to study in Aix. And everything had changed.
“Have you been waiting long?”
“It’s OK, not too long.”
Charlotte plants three kisses on her old friend’s cheeks and collapses into a chair with a sigh. Her sunglasses overwhelm her face but when she takes them off, the make-up under them is perfect. Not too little or too much, in good taste. It’s because of this kind of detail that Séverine hates her. Bitch. Perfect bitch.
“You look amazing.”
“Don’t, I look like a vampire. Luckily, I’m staying with my parents for a few days, so I can recharge.”
Recharge with what? Séverine wonders. She can’t see anything except the green river Sorgue and the tourist-packed Sunday market. It’s where she lives, not a Zen retreat. Recharge, my ass. Talking about asses, Charlotte’s is still nice and firm and appreciated, judging from the owner, who affably makes a beeline for their table.
“What can I get you, girls?”
“White wine,” Charlotte commands. “Two.”
Séverine swallows, hating herself for saying nothing, but then who gives a shit? It’s always been like this, so why would it change?
Charlotte decides, Charlotte lays down the law so naturally that there’s no room to take offence or fight back. She’s won from the outset. She often did before, but since she left it’s got worse. You’d think she’d lose out on something, a point of reference or an advantage, but it’s actually the opposite that’s happened. She’s got ahead while the other two have stayed here, stuck on repeat like the track on the Tarantula. Whenever Charlotte returns it’s always as a tourist, always more or less single. For a time she lived with one of her university lecturers, then there were others, but they didn’t stick around for long.
Séverine listens as Charlotte tells her about her latest love affair, some guy she met in a live music café and who dances like a god. Men here don’t dance. They just stick to the bar and that’s it. Or, if they do, then it’s so they can rub themselves up against a woman rather than for the delight of moving, the solitary pleasure of a body spinning. That’s for women. Charlotte goes back to her adolescent body language as she takes small sips of her white wine, pulls faces and rolls her eyes. After a while, Charlotte finally asks about Séverine, who raises her voice and laughs loudly as she emphasizes her domestic happiness. She talks about her job and says a few things about her daughters. She’s not sure whether or not to mention Céline. Then Charlotte suddenly fixes her beautiful, perfectly made-up eyes on Séverine’s, narrows them slightly and leans forward the way she used to when she was about to confess a truth or share a secret. Slowly, almost deliberately, she gently shakes her head and tousles her fringe with her fingertips. “I don’t know how you do it: two teenage kids and twenty years with the same guy. Honestly, I couldn’t handle it.”
Something stirs inside Séverine, like a wave. Without letting go of her brilliantly untruthful smile, but with a slight tremor in her chesty laugh, she tells the bitch that she loves her life and wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world.
“And,” she concludes with a complicit little smile, “things with Manuel are as hot as they were at the beginning.”
Charlotte shakes her head. Impervious – or not? – to the cruelty of her association of ideas, she carries on. “What about Sabrina? Any news?”
Sabrina, the last member of the amazing girl trio who reigned supreme in 1992, is currently vegetating in a Monclar high-rise. Not a penny in her pocket, with three children and three guys somewhere out there, she had to agree to move her family to whatever social housing she was allocated. Charlotte knows perfectly well that Sabrina spends her life writing letters of complaint, mad, paranoid letters, to the local authorities. That social services know her life by heart. That her attractive adolescent curves, which made boys salivate, turned into flab a long time ago, and that no guy wants to take her clothes off in the back of a car, or anywhere else for that matter.
“She’s fine.”
“Do you still see each other?”
“She lives too far away. With work and all… We don’t meet up as often as we used to. Hardly ever, in fact.”
Charlotte suddenly livens up, a girlish pout on her perfect face. “Remember the time Thierry was caught by his father after the party at Fred’s house?”
Séverine tears the rabbit’s head off her key ring. It was hanging on by a few threads. And now it’s lying in the middle of the table like a bloodied trophy.
“I have to go.”
“Really? So soon?”
“It was nice to see you.”
They hug like before, smacking kisses, and Charlotte stays on the terrace with her book and her large sunglasses, like a Parisienne.
Séverine slowly walks away, trips over a flagstone, speeds up, swears, then speeds up again. She clutches her bag. She keeps repeating that she won’t see Charlotte again. She goes past the clothes shop she normally likes but hates right now. The entire collection suddenly looks totally boring. The sales assistant waves at her but Séverine cannot respond. She wishes she was living in a sprawling apartment complex, in a huge city where no sales assistant would remember her name, and nobody would know she’s about to become a grandmother at thirty-four. A city that’s not a village.
Back at the car, her chest heaves too hard with irregular breathing. Despite herself, she emits throaty little sounds, like a puppy that’s being beaten. She drops her keys. She crouches, puts a hand on the asphalt, palm open, and lets out a deep breath. With her right hand, she fiddles with the little dolphin around her neck. Finally, she finds the rabbit’s body and the keys, attached, and swoops them up with rage.
A gigantic city where she would not have grown up. A city where she would never have been twelve, or sixteen, or twenty. A city where she wouldn’t have marked every bench and every wall with the insolence of her youth. When Séverine sits behind the wheel of her car, she doesn’t start the engine straight away. She strokes the belly of the headless rabbit for a long time, to calm herself down.