3

‘How do you like the cannelloni, Betty?’

Mario’s voice was cheerful, familiar, comforting.

‘They’re very good,’ she replied with a grateful look.

‘Admit that it’s not bad here.’

‘It’s so nice that I feel as if I’m already a regular.’

At the beginning of the evening she had been daunted, because she felt like the newcomer and was convinced that, at the sight of her, everyone would remember her episode of the previous evening. Her embarrassment soon passed, especially when she realized that being in Laure’s company acted as a sort of guarantee, and they saw her as one of them.

One detail was proof enough. When a regular came and leaned over Laure to say a few words to her, as happened from time to time, he didn’t feel he had to lower his voice.

On the table between them was a huge dish of cannelloni and a carafe of Chianti. The red wine in the glasses was dark, almost black, with a lighter, pink patch in the centre. Outside, a cold wind lashed rain in the faces of the people alighting from cars, soaking their clothes, and when they wanted to leave, they found their vehicles stuck in the mud.

The buxom barmaid was at her post, and there were more people at the bar than the evening before but few in the restaurant, perhaps because it wasn’t as late.

Everything was as she remembered it, the red walls hung with etchings illustrating English hunting scenes. The previous night, despite her inebriated state, she had taken it all in, and now she had the confirmation and was amazed.

She had appeared to be totally wrapped up in herself, her drama, her self-disgust. On top of that, she had been so drunk that she’d fallen off her chair. Everything was shaky, in her life and around her, and yet she had noticed minor details like the postcards slipped inside the mirror frame behind the bottles at the bar. She was certain that one of them depicted the bay of Naples, another the temples of Angkor Wat.

The room seemed a little bigger today. She discovered that in fact there were two rooms and that the second one, which was also a restaurant, was darker than the first, illuminated with candles in bottles on the tables.

Was this section reserved for insiders, long-standing customers or lovers? Was Le Trou a haunt for real lovers?

‘How’s that stomach of yours behaving?’ inquired Laure.

‘Very well, for the time being.’

She ate heartily. Her eyes, she could feel, were shining, her expression lively and, at the slightest provocation, her lips parted in a smile that was barely hesitant.

She was like a convalescent, and it was enjoyable. She was aware that this sense of well-being was transient, superficial, that nothing had changed, that she was still the same, in fact, with all the problems she had accumulated and to which there was no solution.

Did Laure realize how precarious, how artificial, her mood was? Did she know that from one minute to the next it would all probably begin again, like the previous evening? A little alcohol kept her going, as did having dinner in the company of someone who was taking care of her. But the night before, too, sitting opposite the doctor, she had been similarly relaxed. It had only taken a couple of drinks.

There was no point worrying in advance. It was like being abroad, when, in a different clime and a foreign city, people forget their cares and lose their self-consciousness.

Laure knew her surname now. When they had gone down to the hotel lobby together, the receptionist had asked Betty:

‘Would you kindly fill in this form?’

And, on reading her details, the man had commented:

‘Étamble, like the general?’

‘I’m his daughter-in-law.’

She added:

‘Is it possible to have luggage collected from Paris?’

‘Just give your instructions to the concierge.’

Laure tactfully kept her distance. Betty explained to the liveried employee that there were a number of suitcases, perhaps a trunk, to be collected from 22A, Avenue de Wagram.

‘Do you know how many items?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think they will all fit into a car?’

‘Probably. I’m almost certain.’

‘It might be best if you wrote a note in case there’s a problem.’

She scribbled on a notepad:

Please give my belongings to the bearer of this note. Thank you.

This time, she signed ‘Betty’. It wasn’t an official document. She added nothing. She had nothing to add.

‘Can we go there this evening?’

‘I think so.’

‘Will there be someone at home?’

‘There’s always someone.’

How could there be no one in the apartment? The nanny at least would be there, since Anne-Marie was only nineteen months old.

She was back in Laure’s car and had recognized it from its smell, the rough feel of the seats. General Étamble had died in Lyon the year before. He had lived there for many years. His wife was from Lyon and belonged to the same social circle as Laure, and so it was likely that the two women knew each other.

Laure didn’t mention it, remained unruffled, capable of keeping quiet for a long time without the silence becoming awkward, then suddenly, for no apparent reason, launching into a long anecdote.

‘Did you recognize John?’ she asked while eating, perhaps to stop Betty’s mind from wandering.

And since Betty didn’t understand straight away:

‘The English lord I told you about yesterday. He’s sitting to the left of the bar in the company of a girl with mousey hair wearing a leopard-skin coat.’

It was the bald man, tall and burly, a little portly, with a painter’s brush moustache. He was sitting bolt upright on the banquette like a retired officer and looking straight ahead, without paying the slightest attention to his companion, who looked like some sort of starlet.

With his ruddy complexion and rosacea cheeks, he still cut a fine figure.

‘He’s going to sit there like that, without saying a word, for two or three hours. He doesn’t drink whisky but brandy. What’s going through his mind while the alcohol gradually soaks in, no one knows, and it is possible that he himself doesn’t either.

‘At one point, you’ll see him stand up and head over towards the door, with a barely faltering step. He realizes, to the minute, when he’s had enough and we have never seen him unsteady on his feet. The woman will follow him – today, the blonde, tomorrow or next week a different one, because they never last long.

‘His driver waits for him in his Bentley. Within a few minutes, he’ll be home at his estate in Louveciennes where he breeds Great Danes.

‘I learned from Jeanine, the barmaid with a hairy mole on her cheek, what happens next, because she went there one night when he didn’t have a companion, or rather, one night when his companion had become ill and they’d had to …’

She didn’t bite her tongue. But it came down to the same thing.

‘Like me, last night,’ said Betty quite cheerfully.

‘She was in a much worse state and she had to be taken to hospital. Jeanine stepped in, as it were, and I have reason to believe that at his place it’s always the same scenario.

‘First of all, in the hallway, he offered her a drink, like a man of the world being a dutiful host. Then he led her to his bedroom where he changed into a dressing-gown and sat in an armchair.

‘He didn’t say a word to Jeanine, who ended up taking her clothes off while he, seemingly satisfied, sat there watching her, like at the theatre.

‘He pointed to the bed and she got into it, waiting for something to happen, anything. Apparently, after a while, in the silence of the room and the house, she began to feel scared.

‘Still in his armchair, he stared at her the way he’s now staring at the face in front of him. Within reach, on a pedestal table, was a crystal decanter containing brandy. The only movement he made was to fill his glass, cup it in his palm to warm it and take the occasional sip.

‘Jeanine thought she was doing the right thing in trying to start a conversation. When she saw that this upset him and he looked annoyed, she kept quiet.

‘This went on for a long time, more than an hour, and, in the end, she saw that John was asleep, still holding his empty glass.’

Laure was not laughing. Nor was Betty.

‘People say that he married one of the most beautiful women in England. She still lives in her house in London and her country estate in Sussex. They’re not divorced or separated. They’re still good friends and see each other from time to time. When he found out he was impotent as the result of a war wound, he simply faded into the background, giving her her freedom. That was twenty years ago and, for the past twenty years, he has sat in his armchair, drink in hand, in front of a naked woman.’

Betty didn’t dare turn to look over towards the corner where the Englishman was sitting, and Laure concluded:

‘“An oddball”, as our friend Mario would say.’

At the bar, two women in their thirties, in slacks and jumpers, were fishing gherkin after gherkin out of a huge jar; the African, Louis, came over at almost regular intervals to show his laughing face as if in a comedy act, and Betty was beginning to wonder whether all this wasn’t rigged, if it wasn’t staged, whether the characters were genuine or not.

‘What became of Maria?’ she asked abruptly.

It was Laure’s turn to be bemused.

‘Maria?’

Betty was in the habit of asking this sort of question. When she was young, her family used to make fun of her, and one of her childhood phrases had become a private joke in the house in Avenue de Versailles. It was before the war, when her father was still alive.

‘What happened to the frog?’

Her parents had read a story from a picture book about a frog and other animals. When the story ended, her little voice had rung out in the silence:

‘What happened to the frog?’

Her father and mother had caught each other’s eye, not knowing what to reply. In the book, the story had ended. There was no reason to take any further interest in the frog.

After that, whenever she opened her mouth to ask a question, her father would interrupt her, laughing:

‘What happened to the frog?’

Was it not a bit like that with the South American woman?

‘Do you mean Maria Urruti?’

‘Yes. I wonder whether they locked her up.’

‘Mario never heard from her.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Around thirty. When he told me about her, I initially thought she was a mature older woman, especially since her husband was nearly seventy when he died in Monte-Carlo.’

Betty too looked around thirty. She said nothing, ate her cheese – brie – but with no appetite. She had to force herself not to look over at the Englishman’s corner and, catching sight of Jeanine who was joking with the two women in slacks, she pictured her on the bed, a four-poster bed in her imagination, lying still and silent under the fixed gaze of the man clutching his drink.

In Buenaventura, the family had boarded the boat, most likely brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins. She saw them as a compact, solid block. They had the authorities on their side.

‘How are you doing, ladies?’

‘Fine, Mario. We’re eating.’

‘That’s good. There aren’t many oddballs this evening. Anyone would think they’re afraid of getting wet.’

He glanced briefly at Betty, to check what state she was in, then, before walking off, pressed his hand on Laure’s shoulder for a moment in an almost marital gesture.

‘The fact is,’ said Laure, ‘he loves his customers, and when they don’t come, he’s not happy.’

But Betty had sensed for a few seconds that, for Mario, she wasn’t a customer like any other and that, sooner or later, there would be something else. Did Laure suspect it? Was she jealous? Was she content with what he gave her?

Betty had begun to float once more and was in search of a solid footing. She hadn’t drunk a lot. She was determined to stop in time, not wanting to be unwell and make a spectacle of herself again.

Even so, she felt a little nostalgic for the previous night, when, inert, she hadn’t needed to worry about herself and nothing had mattered any more.

What mattered right now? She had sent for her belongings. The concierge at the Carlton must have dispatched a driver, perhaps accompanied by a porter. Guy would be sitting in the drawing room with his mother, and probably his brother and sister-in-law too.

The two brothers, the two households, lived in the same apartment block, Guy on the third floor and Antoine on the fourth. Antoine was the eldest. He was thirty-eight and had gone into the military, following in his father’s footsteps. One day he would be a general. An artillery commander, seconded to the Ministry of Defence, he had an office in Rue Saint-Dominique.

His wife, Marcelle, was an officer’s daughter, the sister of officers. They had two boys, Paul and Henri, who were at the lycée.

Why, since Antoine was the eldest, did they all gather at Guy’s in the evenings? They had never made a conscious decision to do so. It had just happened of its own accord, and no one had questioned it.

Sometimes, Antoine would drop in alone, wearing a smoking jacket, and join Guy in his little study. Other times, Marcelle came down with him and Betty had to keep her company.

There was a log fire in winter, a big standard lamp with a cracked parchment lampshade. The children would be asleep, the two boys on the fourth floor and the girls on the third. At around ten o’clock, Elda, the governess, a Swiss woman from the Valais, would appear in the doorway and ask:

‘May I go to bed, madame?’

Because Betty was madame. She had a household. Two children, a husband, a brother-in-law, a sister-in-law and, in Lyon, a mother-in-law who wrote to her sons every week. Every couple of months or so, she would come and spend a few days in Paris.

When the general had been alive, she and her husband used to stay at a hotel on the Left Bank where they were regulars. Since his death, Madame Étamble stayed at Avenue de Wagram, on the fourth floor, with her eldest.

She may not have liked Betty but she was not unpleasant towards her, contenting herself with looking at her as if trying to understand.

‘Why her?’ she seemed to be wondering, as she then glanced at her son.

Betty asked herself the same question. The general’s widow was not wrong. Ultimately, no one was wrong. Guy neither, and Betty was convinced he had loved her, that he still loved her and that, most likely, he was deeply hurt.

She had nothing to complain about. At thirty-five, Guy had heavy responsibilities, grave concerns, because, having graduated among the top of his year at the École Polytechnique, he had a key post at the Union des Mines, Boulevard Malesherbes, an imposing fortress of a building, where banking operations of national importance were performed.

He was handsome, better-looking than Antoine, more striking, as his mother liked to say. Fair-haired with regular features, he dressed with the utmost elegance; not in dark colours, like a businessman afraid of not being taken seriously, but, on the contrary, most often in light colours, choosing pastel shades and soft, supple fabrics. He played tennis. His car was a sports model.

He had a cheerful nature and could make Charlotte laugh for an hour without her becoming bored and without tiring himself. He was the one who had put her to bed each night when she was a baby, and he continued the tradition with Anne-Marie.

Did Laure know the Étamble family?

Betty imagined them all in the drawing room, this evening, when the driver or the porter had shown them her note.

Where had they put her belongings? Who had taken her dresses from their hangers in the wardrobes, gathered her underwear, her shoes, her personal knick-knacks, emptied the drawers of the dressing table and her little Louis XV writing desk?

Olga, the maid, who had always looked at her even more harshly than her mother-in-law and who had strong masculine hands? Elda?

Which suitcases had they used? There were no ‘his’ and ‘her’ suitcases. They all belonged to both of them. Had they debated the question as they brought the big trunk down from the attic?

It was three days, four now, since she’d left, and they had probably been expecting her to send someone for her things straight away, the next morning in any case, as she had only the clothes she had been wearing.

Had they not been a little concerned at not hearing from her? Had they imagined that she had thrown herself into the Seine or swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills?

If she telephoned the Carlton, she could have found out whether the driver had returned, if the family had handed over her suitcases, whom he had seen and what they’d said to him.

Perhaps her mother-in-law’s illness had been more serious than the previous ones? She had a heart complaint, that was for certain. She’d been receiving treatment for a long time. Even if she exaggerated her dizzy spells to arouse sympathy, she was still sick and, when Antoine had come to their apartment, he had been very frightened at the sight of his mother, whose lips had turned blue.

‘May I ask you what you’re thinking about? Am I being indiscreet?’

‘About my mother-in-law. You must know her.’

‘She lives three doors away from me, on Quai de Tilsitt. Because I’ve kept my apartment in Lyon and I make a pilgrimage there every so often so as not to lose touch.’

Lose touch with what? With her former life, her social connections? With the memory of her husband? Although she didn’t spell it out, Betty was almost certain she understood.

‘I used to meet them quite frequently in the past, her and the general, at ceremonies and official dinners we were required to attend. Apart from those obligations, my husband and I had a very small circle made up of doctors, two lawyers and a musician no one has heard of.’

Was there also, in a secluded drawing room, a standard lamp with a parchment lampshade, a piano and a sofa where the ladies sat side by side? Was there a clock that showed the minutes that were longer than anywhere else and, outside, night and day, like a reminder of another life, the noisy rumble of passing cars?

‘She’s in Paris,’ said Betty.

She didn’t want to talk about her and yet she was incapable of keeping quiet. She made herself believe that she would stop when she wanted to, that she wouldn’t go any further than she herself had decided.

‘She’s been there for three days,’ she added. ‘Four now! It’s funny, I always count one day less.’

It only made sense to her. For Laure it would doubtless sound baffling.

‘I married one of her sons, Guy, the youngest.’

It was Laure who went on:

‘The one who didn’t go into the army, much to the general’s despair.’

‘His brother Antoine is at the Ministry of Defence.’

‘And he married a Mademoiselle Fleury. I used to know her elder sister. Although the Fleurys aren’t from Lyon, they have family there, vaguely related to mine. As for the general’s wife, she’s a Gouvieux. Her father owned a chemicals plant which the sons took over, except one, Hector, who’s a doctor and is head of ophthalmology at the Broussais hospital, where my husband was also head of his department.’

She smiled with a hint of irony.

‘You see! I’m talking as if in a Lyon drawing room. I also know that the Étambles have an estate in the Chassagne forest, near Chalamont, not far from the place where my brother-in-law goes duck-shooting.’

‘I’ve been there.’

‘Often?’

‘Every year in the six years I’ve been married. The entire family spends the month of August there – the general, when he was still alive, his wife, the two brothers, their wives, their children …’

She didn’t know why her eyes filled with tears. It wasn’t nostalgia. She had always hated that month of August spent at the estate, the vast mansion with its useless turrets, the bedrooms with creaky floorboards, the iron beds they assembled for the children, the damp mattresses, the squelchy grounds.

She dreamed of the sea, a beach in the sun, salt water splashing her face, her body relaxed in a swimsuit. She dreamed of music on the terraces of outdoor restaurants, shellfish with white wine, of a motorized speedboat bouncing over the waves.

For hours on end, Guy would play tennis with his brother, sometimes with neighbours. Some days, the two wives were invited to play mixed doubles, and Betty missed every serve through trying too hard.

‘We made a mistake,’ she concluded in a leap that did not perturb Laure.

‘So I’d gathered.’

Laure turned to Joseph and gave a little signal. Betty noticed. She could have said no. She didn’t because it was the only solution.

She couldn’t carry on talking like this, in this detached way, as if they were relatives reminiscing over family memories. The portrait she had just painted was false, and Laure must know it was. It wasn’t a family affair. The others didn’t count. The others hadn’t done anything.

‘I have two children,’ she went on, staring fixedly.

Laure waited in silence for her to go on.

‘Last month, Charlotte blew out the four candles on her birthday cake. Anne-Marie is nineteen months, and is beginning to talk like a proper little person.’

Joseph brought the whisky and soda. Why didn’t Laure stop her, prevent her from drinking? Was she unaware, she who knew so many things, that it was likely to happen again, that it was inevitably going to happen again?

Was she doing it on purpose, so that Betty would confide in her, because she needed to know people’s secrets? She had said:

‘Mario calls them his oddballs. You’ll see!’

And hadn’t she displayed a certain delight in telling the story of Maria Urruti?

When, earlier, she had disclosed John’s disability, Betty had had the impression that she was undressing him in public, that she was also undressing the buxom barmaid and even the mousey starlet – all the women who had followed the Englishman to his mansion in Louveciennes, and now Betty was embarrassed to look at him.

Would Laure do the same with her? Would she not relish telling, one day, as impassive and impersonal as her husband describing a clinical case, the story of the young Étamble woman?

What had they said last night, or rather at dawn, when Mario had come to join her in her room?

‘Is she asleep?’

‘I knocked her out with a jab.’

‘Didn’t she put up a struggle! Did you undress her?’

Had Laure described her every detail to her companion? Had she added that she was dirty? Had they both come to look at her while she was asleep?

‘Where do you think she’s come from?’

‘Bernard picked her up in a bar.’

Perhaps Laure had mentioned that her suit came from one of the best couturiers in Paris, that her underwear came from Rue Saint-Honoré? Who knew whether they’d searched her handbag?

It would have been quite natural to look inside, even without malicious intent, without unhealthy curiosity. They’d gathered her up off the floor of Le Trou, like a sick animal. No one knew where she hailed from, not even the doctor who, in the meantime, was chasing imaginary rabbits around his bedroom.

Her pulse rate was a hundred and forty-three. She could be taken ill and neither Laure nor Mario would know who to inform, other than the police.

Had they found the cheque? For a moment she wondered whether it wasn’t because of the cheque for one million that …

She didn’t want to! She wasn’t as exhausted as she had been the night before. She had slept. She’d been cared for. She’d had a bath. She had become almost a normal person again, like the four who had just come in and brought a smile to everyone’s faces.

Betty couldn’t help smiling as well, and yet they were normal people and her own father, for instance, coming in here with his family, would probably have behaved in the same way.

The man could be anything by profession – an industrialist, a lawyer, a civil servant, a local doctor – he was a middle-aged man, comfortable, self-assured, not necessarily naive.

It wasn’t his fault if his wife had grown fat and had a candy-pink complexion. Elsewhere, as a mother, she wouldn’t have looked ridiculous either.

True, there were the twins, two tall girls of seventeen or eighteen, as pudgy and pink as their mother, dressed in green to boot, identical from head to toe.

All four were hungry. They had driven a long way and were happy to have found a restaurant in the countryside.

But the minute he walked in the father had frowned on spotting Jeanine behind her bar, and he had had to slide diagonally behind the two women in slacks so as not to brush up against them.

The next moment, he saw the laughing face of the African, who appeared and disappeared like a puppet character.

He seated his wife and daughters, and then sat down himself and clapped his hands to call the waiter:

‘Waiter!’

Joseph came over without hurrying.

‘Whisky?’

‘No, thank you.’

He turned towards the women.

‘Do you fancy a little aperitif?’

They said no, as expected.

‘Can I have the menu, please?’

‘There is no menu, monsieur.’

Intrigued, he glanced over at the tables where people were eating.

‘But this is a restaurant, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed it is.’

Mario broke in:

‘Good evening monsieur, good evening mesdames. I presume you’re going to eat some cannelloni?’

‘What else do you have?’

‘Cheese afterwards, a superb brie, salad and Empress rice pudding.’

‘I mean as a main course …’

‘Cannelloni.’

Under the table Laure’s foot brushed that of Betty, who was forced to smile. The man gazed about him with a dawning anxiety: first the walls, the bar, Jeanine again, and lastly his eyes met John’s fixed stare.

‘Will you have some cannelloni?’

‘Why not?’

The doctor came in and distracted Betty’s attention. He was dressed as elegantly as the previous evening, in grey again, and walked with a certain stiffness. From the doorway he had recognized her and had hesitated for a moment. Now he was walking over to them.

‘Good evening, Laure.’

Then he leaned over towards Betty and kissed her hand.

‘I hope you have forgiven me for disappearing last night, if you missed me, that is? Laure will have explained to you …’

He bowed again and then went and sat on a stool at the bar.

The four had resigned themselves to cannelloni and the Chianti that had been placed peremptorily on their table. Still uncomfortable, they tried to reassure themselves by starting up a loud conversation.

‘Was your aunt not surprised to see the two of you arrive unexpectedly?’

‘Guess what, Papa,’ replied one of the daughters in a theatrical voice, ‘Aunty was in the attic having a big clear-out. You remember the attic and all those crazy objects in it?’

She was playing to the gallery and John’s gaze, resting on her, seemed to excite her.

‘We went up without making any noise and, all of a sudden, Laurence let out her famous moo. It really sounded as if a cow had heaved itself up to the attic, and Aunty dropped the pile of gilt-edged books she was holding …’

Were Guy to walk in here without being warned, would he not have felt ill at ease? Antoine, most definitely. And Marcelle! Antoine and Marcelle would have turned on their heel straight away. Hadn’t Betty ended up shouting, the previous evening?

She wouldn’t shout any more. She wasn’t afraid any more. But on scrutinizing the faces, she still felt a vague anxiety.

She suspected that Laure had more stories to tell her, that, in a few days, in a few hours, the characters who were still anonymous would become as colourful as the doctor, the Englishman, and that Maria Urruti whom she couldn’t get out of her mind.

‘What happened to the frog?’

One day, someone might similarly ask, perhaps with a mix of compassion and curiosity:

‘What happened to little Betty?’

Because her thoughts always returned to herself. Deep down, at the root of everything, there was a little Betty who was trying to understand herself and wished people would try to understand her.

It wasn’t out of self-pity that she said ‘little’ in referring to herself. She really was little, slight, delicate, and had never weighed more than forty-three kilos.

Only when she was pregnant had she put on weight, but so little that the worried doctors wanted to induce birth at seven months, especially the second time.

Had the fact that she felt smaller, less robust, than other people had an influence on her behaviour? Someone had told her that it had, a medical student who, for a while, had amused himself psychoanalysing her.

She had believed him at the time. She had also believed she loved him. She tried to answer his questions honestly. Until the day she realized that these questions always revolved around the same subject and were designed to reach a foregone conclusion.

She hadn’t broken off the relationship immediately. She had carried on playing the game because it excited her too. In actual fact, he was the one who tired of it first, finding perhaps that she lacked imagination and didn’t vary her answers enough. He hadn’t said goodbye to her. He had simply disappeared.

The four were eating. The mousey girl was waiting. From time to time the African came and poked his head through a doorway.

Bernard made his way to the toilet in a dignified manner, and Mario gazed after him. Laure sipped her drink, watching her companion over the top of her glass.

‘It’s not their fault,’ sighed Betty, dejectedly.

She wasn’t talking about the table with the twins but about the Étambles, the mother, the two sons, the sister-in-law, the boys of the brother’s family and her own daughters. Her two daughters who were no longer hers!

She had to go back to the subject. It was inevitable. She had to talk, and to talk as she needed to do, she had to drink.

But not here. She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself again, see the faces turned towards her as they were now towards the foursome, all eyes on her as they had been the previous evening.

She drained her glass in one gulp and said anxiously:

‘Would you mind very much if we left?’

‘Do you feel unwell?’

She didn’t feel unwell, but it was best not to admit it.

‘I don’t know. I’d rather go home.’

She had said go home, as if the blue-panelled room with the bust of Marie-Antoinette was already her place.