9:03 A.M.
The hairy hand on my mouth is choking me.
I can’t breathe.
I am suffocating. Suffocating with fear. I want to bite the hand, tear into it with my teeth like a wild animal, rip off each finger and spit it out, one by one.
Behind me, the monster breathes hot air against the back of my neck.
“Shh, Sopha. You mustn’t scream. Whatever you do, don’t scream.”
Papa?
The hand releases its pressure. I turn around, confused.
Papa?
Papa is standing in front of me. He crouches down so that his face is level with mine. His eyes look into mine.
“Calm down, sweetheart. I came running as soon as I heard you screaming. Please don’t start again. I’ve closed the garage door, but the neighbors could still hear us. They could call the police. They could . . .”
I don’t want to listen to Papa any more. I put my hands over my ears and scream.
“She’s dead, Papa! The old lady with blue hair is dead!”
Papa strokes my hair, his hand cold and hairy like a spider.
“Shh, Sopha. You mustn’t think about that. We have to leave. Quickly.”
A huge and deadly spider.
“The old lady has a knife sticking out of her neck, Papa. You killed her.”
My eyes look into his.
“It’s you, Papa. You’re the one who killed her!”
Papa moves closer.
The spider rests on my shoulder, its legs creeping up my neck.
“Of course I didn’t, Sopha! How could you believe that? You must never say anything like that to anyone, Sopha. Do you hear me? Never. You have to trust me, always, always, no matter what people tell you, no matter what you see. Now, come on, we have to leave. We have to get the bag and go.”
I’m shivering. I don’t care. I won’t move.
“I know you killed her, Papa. We’re the only ones in the house.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Sopha. I was with you the whole time.”
The spider moves down towards my heart, while another one comes to rest on my hair again. I’m trembling. I’m crying. I know I’m right.
“You didn’t take a shower! You killed the lady to get her car. To get her house too. And her things. And these boy’s clothes I’m wearing.”
I realize I’m yelling louder and louder. Suddenly the spider flies towards my face. At first, I don’t understand.
The slap makes my cheek sting.
I take a step back, shocked into silence.
“That’s enough, Sopha! We don’t have any time to lose! Turn around!”
“No!”
The spider is lifted into the air again, threateningly.
This time, I give in.
Papa opens the passenger door of the yellow car. Very quietly, almost without making any noise at all.
Even if I don’t look, I know what Papa is doing.
He is taking the old lady out of the car. He doesn’t care about the blood on the seat. He doesn’t care that the grandma is dead. He doesn’t care that she can never again play with the boy whose shorts and shirt and trainers I’m wearing.
He doesn’t care about anything.
All he wants is a car, so the police won’t catch him. Because he killed Maman, I’m sure of it now.
Because he killed her and he doesn’t want to go to prison.
9:11 A.M.
“You can turn around now, Sopha.”
There is blood all over Papa’s blue shirt.
I see the old lady’s feet poking out from behind two old tyres and a lawnmower.
“Get in the car, Sopha. I’m sorry I slapped you, but I didn’t have any choice. Even if you’re only a little girl, you have to understand. We must keep going, no matter what. You’ll see, Sopha, there are some extraordinary places here, wonderful places like you’ve never seen before.”
Wonderful places?
I’m sitting on the back seat of the car. A dead woman’s car.
Papa is crazy.
“I don’t care about places. It’s Maman I want to see!”
Papa has calmed down again.
“Then you will have to come with me, Sopha. And trust me. If you want to see Maman again, we have to get to the other side of the island by this afternoon.”
“Promise?”
I don’t know why I’m asking him that. It’s not like I’ll believe his answer anyway.
“Yes, sweetheart. I promise.”
9:17 A.M.
Martial keeps moving his head from side to side, glancing in the rear-view mirror of the Nissan Micra to check on Sopha, then looking straight ahead again, watching out for anything suspicious. For now, the streets of Ermitage-les-Bains are more or less deserted.
Martial drives for one kilometer, his fingers tense on the steering wheel.
In front of them, the road to Saint-Pierre is blocked. A line of cars several hundred meters long stretches out from the police roadblock, just before the roundabout at Chemin Bruniquel. Martial moves out to the right a little bit so he can see what’s going on. The police are stopping every vehicle, checking the driver’s papers, looking at each passenger, then opening the boot. There is no way they will let him through, even with Sopha disguised as a boy, even though he has altered his own appearance by shaving his beard and eyebrows, by putting on thick glasses and a cap with the visor pulled down low.
A father and a six-year-old child.
Without any papers.
They are bound to be suspicious.
It’s over. They’re caught in a trap.
A 4x4 honks its horn behind him. He parks farther off the road, crushing the roots of some beach cabbage.
Martial glances at Sopha, who is lying on the back seat, and goes over and over the unsolvable equation in his head.
The police are searching for a father and a six-year-old child.
There is only one way of solving this equation. A terrible solution for Sopha, more monstrous than everything he has already made her suffer, more traumatic than that face-to-face meeting with the old woman’s corpse in the garage.
And yet, once again, he has no choice.
Sopha rolls her eyes at him, surprised, as he manoeuvres the car as discreetly as possible.
“Papa, why are we turning round?”