He wasn’t afraid when she came in, unexpectedly, right in the middle of the evening. He just thought it was much too early and that because of her, yet again, he wouldn’t be able to go all the way.
He wasn’t afraid either when she asked him all those questions, a real police interrogation. She wanted details.
He knows how to keep quiet. He really didn’t care that Mathis’s mother was furious or that she sent them to bed like little boys.
But he was scared when she appeared in the room at nine o’clock the next morning and announced she was taking him home. She knew he was at his father’s this weekend and of course wanted to speak to him. She had some things to tell him. It was important for parents to keep each other informed, she said. She couldn’t say nothing about something so serious, he needed to understand that. She said she was sorry, but she didn’t look at all sorry. She looked like someone who was bored and had just found something to occupy herself. She told him to take a shower and get dressed while she made breakfast.
Sitting in front of his bowl of hot chocolate, Théo claimed that his father worked on Sunday mornings and wouldn’t be home. But she wasn’t going to buy that.
“Give me his number so that I can confirm that with him.”
“He doesn’t have a cell phone and the landline isn’t working.”
“In that case we’ll have to go and see him.”
He wasn’t hungry. His whole body felt knotted. All the organs they’d drawn in biology had gotten tangled up and now formed a compact, painful ball.
She wasn’t going to change her mind, he could be certain of that.
She insisted that he finish his bowl of hot chocolate. It was very cold outside and she didn’t want him going out on an empty stomach. She was making an effort to speak nicely to him. Her voice sounded false.
He knows that Mathis’s mother doesn’t like him.
He doesn’t like her either. She uses weird expressions when she speaks, which she must have copied from old books. She speaks as though French were a foreign language that she had learned by heart or borrowed from someone.
He forced down the hot, milky drink. Across the table, Mathis was looking at him helplessly. He was searching for a way to prevent his mother from going with him, but no ideas were coming.
She indicated that it was time to go and went to get Théo’s jacket from the closet. (At Mathis’s everything is neatly put away. Everything has a place that has to be respected.) As she handed it to him, she expressed surprise that he wasn’t dressed more warmly.
She didn’t want Mathis to go with them. She knows Théo’s father lives somewhere around the place d’Italie. She looked at the metro map to check how to get there. She told Théo he’d have to show her the way when they came out of the station.
On the way down in the elevator, he retied his shoelaces so as not to have to look at himself in the mirror or meet this woman’s eye.
Now she’s walking beside him, authoritative and brisk.
Théo feels his heart beating in his stomach in the place where the alcohol first warms and then calms him.
She must not cross the threshold. She must not enter his father’s apartment, let alone talk to him.
If she crosses the threshold, it’s all over.
By any means at all, he must keep her away. Prevent her from getting near.
They’re heading toward the metro. He matches his pace to hers. She senses him following her stride. Then her vigilance relaxes for a few seconds and Théo seizes this brief moment to make a run for it.
He pelts along the boulevard de Grenelle, runs without looking back, keeps going past the first station on Line 6 in case she catches up with him and runs even faster to the next.
At Sèvres-Lecourbe he takes the stairs four at a time to get to the elevated train. He’s laughing. At the last moment he leaps into a carriage just as its doors are about to shut.
That was close!
Rooted to the spot, she was! Didn’t know what hit her.