The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain Read Free Book Online

‘You want to leave me but I’m the one who’s getting out of here!’ he announced before kneeling down to look for his loafers under the bed.
    It was as if the floor was on fire, as though the whole room was about to go up in flames. Yet in spite of his fury, he was surprised to find himself feeling a sense of relief. All the questions about his wife would finally come to an end now, along with his terse replies about needing time. He was tired of trotting out the same old empty excuses. OK, he had been dumped, but the truth was the break-up took a weight off him. As he put on his jacket, he was ashamed to admit he was both mortified and glad. Perhaps that was the most painful part of it.
    â€˜Aren’t you even going to try and stop me?’
    â€˜No,’ replied Édouard breathlessly. ‘No. You’re cheating on me, you’re leaving me, I’m going.’ He did up the metal strap of his Kelton quartz watch and stood in front of Fanny. ‘Goodbye,’ he said coldly, ‘you can keep the room until midday tomorrow.’ Then he picked up his overnight bag.
    â€˜Where are you going?’ she asked gently, though the answer mattered little to her.
    â€˜Maybe Lyon. That’s where everyone thinks I am,’ he replied, opening the door and slamming it behind him.
    Fanny leant against the table, listening to Édouard’s footsteps fading along the corridor, and closed her eyes. Her head was spinning. She slowly took off her jacket, then her skirt, her bra and shoes and finally her knickers and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, naked save for the hat on her head.
    She took her perfume, Solstice, out of her bag and sprayed it over the pillows to mask the smell of Édouard. She took off the hat, laid it on the bed and turned out the light. She slid under the sheets and closed her eyes. Sitting beside her on top of the bed covers, the hat was caught in the moonlight. Fanny brushed her fingers over the soft felt before falling asleep.

 
    The winter sun shone through the net curtains, casting pools of light on Fanny’s breasts. She slowly opened her eyes. The events of the previous night came back to her bit by bit, unlike dreams which drift away the moment you wake up: Édouard under the sheets, listening to her; Édouard scrambling to his feet; Édouard inspecting the initials inside the hat, then the sound of the door slamming shut and, ‘You could have saved me a wasted weekend.’ Then his footsteps in the corridor.
    So it was over. It wasn’t a dream, it really was over. Never again would Fanny return to the hotel room in Batignolles; never again would they fix secret dates in Paris or at Norman ports; never again would she turn on the Minitel in the middle of the night looking for Alpha75. It was over. How could you disappear from someone’s life just like that? Perhaps, when all was said and done, it was just as easy to leave someone’s life as to enter it. A stroke of fate and a few words could be enough to start a relationship. A stroke of fate and a few words could end it too. Before it, nothingness. Afterwards, emptiness. Whatwas left of Édouard? Zilch. Not even a poxy present to pin her feelings on. No cigarette lighter, no key-ring, no scarf, still less a photo of the two of them together or a letter with his handwriting on. Nothing.
    She lay there for a long while, the patches of sunlight warming her breasts and belly, before turning her head to the left. Still sitting on the sheet, the hat had not moved an inch. She remembered that you weren’t supposed to put hats on beds, a stupid old wives’ tale like the ones about ladders and black cats. Fanny didn’t believe in that sort of hocus pocus. All this fuss over a hat, she mused. So who was this F.M.? If only he knew what a chain of events his felt Homburg had set in motion …
    She tried to put a face to the man she had invented the previous evening,