Consolation by Anna Gavalda Read Free Book Online Page B

it’s all different. I’m already retracting. I don’t want to let anything in. I sense that a whole dimension of a forgotten world is opening up beneath my feet, I can sense the void beyond the fringe of the carpet and I’m transfixed, looking instinctively for a doorframe or a chairback to cling to. Because, yes, I do know that handwriting and there’s something wrong. Something in me is resisting, something is already afraid of it. I’m looking. The clicking in my brain has been set in motion and is hiding the rush of sound from outside. I cannot hear their shouts, I cannot hear that they’re asking me to put the lights back on.
    ‘Char-ley!’
    Sorry.
    Laurence is rummaging through her presents and Claire hands me the cake server. ‘Hey, what are you up to? You going to eat standing up?’
    I sit down, take a slice of cake, attack with my little sp . . . I get back up again.
    Because it’s intimidating, I open the letter very carefully with a key in order not to tear it. The sheet has been folded in three. I lift the first fold, feel my heart pounding, then the second, and my heart stops.
    Three words.
    No signature. Nothing.
    Three words.
    Then the sound of the blade falling. Shlack.
    Lift the blade back up.
    As I look up I meet my own reflection in the mirror above the console. I feel like shaking that guy, feel like telling him, What the hell did you think, trying to fool us with your Proustian nonsense just now? Because you knew all along . . .
    Didn’t you?
    He has nothing to say.
    He looks at me and as I don’t react he eventually murmurs something. I can’t hear a thing but I can see his lips trembling. Something like, You stay. Just stay there with her. I’ll go on in. I’m obliged to, you see, but you just stay there. I’ll take care of everything.
    So he goes back to his strawberry gateau. Hears sounds, voices, laughter, takes the glass of champagne someone hands to him and chinks it against others with a smile. The woman who has been sharing his life for years goes round the table with a kiss for everyone. She kisses him too. She says, it’s just lovely, thank you. He protects himself from this surge of tenderness by admitting that it was Mathilde who picked it out and hears Mathilde contradicting him vehemently, as if he’d betrayed her. But he has smelled her perfume, and reaches for her hand, only she has already left, and she’s kissing someone else. He holds his glass out for more. The bottle is empty. He gets up, goes to fetch another one. Opens it too quickly. A geyser of foam. Helps himself, empties his glass, starts again.
    ‘Are you okay?’ asks the woman next to him.
    He says nothing.
    ‘What’s wrong? You’re all pale. You look as if you’d seen a ghost . . .’
    He drinks.
    ‘Charles,’ murmurs Claire.
    ‘Nothing. I’m exhausted.’
    He drinks.
    Cracks inside. Fissures. He’s crazed with tiny lines. Doesn’t want this.
    The varnish cracks, the hinges give way, the bolts snap.
    He doesn’t want this. He struggles. He drinks.
    His older sister is giving him a funny look. He raises his glass in a toast to her. She persists. He declares with a smile, carefully detaching each syllable, ‘Françoise . . . Just for once, just for
one time
in your life . . . try not to piss me off . . .’
    She looks for her valiant knight of a stupid ass of a husband to come to her rescue, but he fails to grasp her outraged sign language. Her face falls. Fortunately, ta-da! her other sister is there.
    Edith gently reprimands Charles with a shake of her headband, ‘Charley . . .’
    He raises his glass to her as well, and is in the process of finding his words when a hand comes to rest on his wrist. He turns, her grip is firm, he goes quiet.
    The noise and chatter continue. Her hand is still there. He looks at her.
    He asks, ‘D’you have any cigarettes?’
    ‘Well . . . You stopped smoking five years ago, might I remind you . . .’
    ‘Well do you?’
    His voice frightens her. She