I congratulate you. But I’ve had enough, enough of this. I’ve put up with everything, but this is the final straw. You will leave, do you hear me! I’ll show you that I am the mistress in this house!’

Mademoiselle Rose listened to her without saying a word. She didn’t even turn white: it was impossible for her pallid face to get any paler. She still appeared to be listening even after Bella had stopped talking. The furious words seemed to awaken an echo that only she could hear. ‘Very well, Madam,’ she said quietly, sounding weary.

Max, who hadn’t said a word until then, shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, let them be, Bella. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.’

‘Get out!’ Bella shouted at her daughter, and she slapped her silent, motionless face, her nails leaving red marks. Hélène let out a yelp, but she refused to cry; she turned towards her father. He was still holding the book covered in writing. He said nothing. He was standing up, and what broke Hélène’s heart, filled it with remorse, was the movement backwards he made, crushing himself against the wall, as if he wanted to disappear, to fade away into the darkness.

Hélène walked over to him and quietly whispered, ‘Papa, do you want me to tell you what the word was, the word you couldn’t see?’

He pushed her away angrily and spoke as quietly as she had: ‘No.’

Then, softly, his mouth clenched shut like hers (by which she understood that he didn’t want to know anything, that he preferred to continue loving this woman and this caricature of a home, preferred to keep the only illusion he had left on this earth), he said, ‘Go away! You’re a very bad girl.’

5

As she did every evening, Mademoiselle Rose stood at Hélène’s bedside and picked up the candle. As she did every evening, she said calmly, ‘Go to sleep quickly now and try not to think about anything.’

She gently stroked Hélène’s forehead with her warm hand, as she’d done for the past eleven years, using the same instinctive gesture; then she sighed and got into her own bed.

Hélène’s heart was breaking. For a long time she looked in despair at Mademoiselle Rose’s calm face in the candlelight; yet she wasn’t asleep. Like Hélène, she was undoubtedly listening to the clock chime the hours; she was breathing in the smell of smoke that filtered into the room from under the door; in the next room Hélène’s parents were talking quietly. From her bed, the little girl could hear an occasional outburst.

‘It isn’t true, Boris, I swear to you, it isn’t true.’

She was such a good liar …

‘You can see how ungrateful children are,’ Hélène heard her continue. ‘She cares more about a foreigner, a scheming woman, than she does about us. It’s that Frenchwoman who’s driving her away from us.’

Then she could only make out some vague whispering, the sound of crying, the weary voice of her father. ‘Calm down now, Bella, my darling …’

‘I swear to you that he’s just a child, a child who loves me. Is that my fault? You know me, come on … I like being attractive, it’s true, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s just a child. You can understand that it sometimes amuses me to tease him, but you’d have to have the dirty mind of a young girl or an old woman to think … I love you, Boris. You do believe me, don’t you?’

Hélène heard Karol sigh deeply. ‘Of course I do, of course …’

‘Then kiss me, don’t look at me like that.’

The sound of kisses. The candle went out.

‘She’ll die,’ Hélène thought in despair. ‘She can’t live without me. She’s alone, all alone. How can they not understand what they’re doing? How can they not see that they’re killing a human being? Oh, I hate them,’ she said, meaning her mother and Max. ‘How I hate them …’ She wrung her weak, trembling hands.