The Silent Friend

Chapter 4

5 MONTHS AFTER

Sandrine

Sandrine slid the snapshot out from under the book in the drawer of the coffee table and stared into her dead son’s round face. He was looking directly at the camera, his eyes the same colour as Sam’s, hazel with green tinges that flashed wildly whenever he was angry or sad. She stroked Antoine’s cheek with her forefinger as she sat on the sofa, a solitary tear plopping onto the photo in her lap as her son grinned up at her. He still had braces on his teeth then. He must have been about fifteen. Only four short years of his life left, although no one could have predicted that at the time.

Sandrine had photos of Antoine hidden everywhere, although Sam – in one of the rare moments when they’d talked about what it meant to have lost Antoine that way – had asked her to take them all down. It was easier for him, he’d said, not to have a constant reminder.

Sandrine saw her son everywhere, even without the photos. She imagined him lounging in front of the television or sitting on the empty chair next to Maxime at the kitchen table. When she closed her eyes, she could visualize him so clearly it was as if his image was printed on the insides of her eyelids.

She was sure the same thoughts and images went through Sam’s head as hers. Identical memories of their son. The first time Antoine managed to swim a whole length of the pool, when he broke his arm falling from a swing, his first medal at judo, the afternoon the boys had all fished together in their grandfather’s pond in Brittany and Antoine was the only one to catch any trout, the day they realized he was taller than Sam … Memories that would forever more be bittersweet.

Sometimes, when she and Sam were sitting across the kitchen table from each other or next to each other on the sofa, they were so close she could reach out and touch him. And yet, the distance between them seemed too far to travel. They blamed themselves and each other, wondering what they would do differently if they could go back in time. They couldn’t talk about it. They couldn’t find the words. And so they barely spoke to each other, even though they both knew that saying the wrong thing was better than saying nothing at all. What was left unsaid loomed large in the small space between them, making the air rancid with resentment and reproach. They were each alone in their grief.

Since it had happened five months ago, Sandrine struggled to keep afloat as every day more waves of sorrow broke over her. She had so many regrets. She wished she’d been a better mother. If only she’d paid more attention to her son. She hadn’t known anything about his plans for that evening, although that wouldn’t have changed anything. Even if she’d asked him where he was going and he’d told her, she wouldn’t have stopped him. She couldn’t have foreseen the danger. Could she?

She hadn’t seen Antoine that day. For once, he’d left the house before she got up. She knew he’d had breakfast – he’d unloaded the dishwasher and cleared his plate and mug into it. But she didn’t know what he was wearing that day and she didn’t remember their last conversation. That still tortured her. Were her last words to him kind? Banal? Good morning or goodnight? Or did she nag him for something inconsequential like talking with his mouth full or playing his music too loudly? When was the last time she’d told her son she loved him or that she was proud of him? When was the last time he’d made her proud? Or smile?

She looked at the photo of Antoine one more time, drinking him in, then put it back under the book and closed the drawer. She rose to her feet, knowing she had to get out of the house and get some air.

She put on her coat and shoes, slung her handbag over her shoulder and stumbled through the door. Her legs felt unsteady as she walked to the bus stop. She could feel people’s eyes on her, boring into her. They must have thought she was drunk or drugged.

She saw her neighbour, Angélique, cross the road, throwing disapproving glances over her shoulder and pulling her toddler by the hand to the safety of the pavement on the other side. Angélique had once been a good friend, but all Sandrine’s friends avoided her now. It was as though her bereavement and affliction were contagious; as though she would jinx them or their children.

The background noise on the bus had a calming effect on Sandrine and chased the thoughts of her dead son to a recess of her mind. She looked out of the window as the bus hugged the River Saône, the road following its meanders. Sandrine lived in a suburb to the north-east of Lyon and hadn’t been into the city centre for many months, but she soon found herself walking across La Place des Terreaux and into the wind.

She glanced at the Bartholdi Fountain to her left. Once, when her parents had come to stay, she’d shown them around Lyon and was amazed to discover almost as much about the city as they had. How was it that when you lived in a place, you were always the last to visit its sights? The fountain’s four sculpted horses pulling the chariot represented rivers racing out to sea, Sandrine recalled, although she couldn’t remember which rivers. She stopped for a moment and studied the monument, wishing she could gallop away or flow out to sea. She’d grown up by the sea and she missed it.

Pulling up the collar of her coat against the cold as she passed the city hall, Sandrine headed for La Rue de la République. There were people everywhere, walking up, down and across the shopping street in undisciplined hordes. She felt as if she were swimming upstream, struggling against the current, but at the same time she appreciated the impression of blending into the crowd. There was little chance she’d see anyone she knew; no one here knew her or anything about her. She could pretend to be normal.

It wasn’t until Sandrine saw the red and white signs for SOLDES in the window of a perfumery that it dawned on her why there were so many shoppers in town. This was the first Saturday of the January sales.

She’d forgotten her gloves and her hands were freezing, so she stopped at Starbucks to warm herself up. When the barista called her name and handed her the vanilla latte she’d ordered, she turned round to see there were no free tables. She spotted a seat in the corner, opposite a woman with a baby, and made her way over.

‘Do you mind if I sit here?’ Sandrine asked.

‘Not at all.’

Sandrine sat down. The baby was pulling on a tuft of his mother’s long brown hair, which spilled out from under her glittery bobble hat. He was giggling and gurgling at noises and grimaces that his mother made. The game amused him for a few minutes before he began to whimper. Holding her baby in one arm, his mother opened a cavernous baby changing bag with difficulty and brought out some mineral water, a baby bottle and a transparent plastic container with milk powder in it. Then she tried to unscrew the cap of the bottle of water with one hand.

‘Can I help you?’ Sandrine asked, expecting the woman to talk her through making up the formula. To Sandrine’s surprise, the woman stood up and thrust her son at Sandrine while she got everything ready for the feed.

Sandrine cooed at the baby, soothing him. It had been several years since she’d held a baby. He wasn’t tiny, but she was careful to support his head anyway. He looked at Sandrine with wide eyes and she thought he was about to cry, but instead his mouth opened, forming a large “O”. Then his mother reached out to take him back. Sandrine watched as she sat back down and the baby latched on to the teat of the bottle, guzzling hungrily.

‘Thank you,’ the woman said, shooting a grateful smile at Sandrine. ‘That was very kind of you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘A lot of people think bottle-feeding makes you a bad mother. They say mothers who breastfeed bond better with their babies.’

Sandrine nodded, hoping she wasn’t trying to strike up a conversation. Sandrine had breastfed both Antoine and Maxime, but there was a lot more to motherhood than choosing between formula or maternal milk. She used to think she wasn’t doing a bad job as a mum, but she was no longer so sure. She wanted to be a good mother to Maxime but her younger son seemed estranged from her now.

As she watched the mother with her baby boy, a memory from twenty years ago erupted into Sandrine’s mind: holding Antoine, her miracle baby, for the first time, seconds after he was born.

She and Sam had tried for a baby for so long. And just when they thought it might never happen, Sandrine finally got pregnant. At the seven-month scan, they asked if their baby was a boy or a girl. But the gynaecologist shook her head and wouldn’t answer the question. That was when they realized something was wrong. Their baby girl, Léa, had no heartbeat.

Sandrine had been inconsolable and Sam had been so supportive, even as he grieved himself. One night, six or seven weeks after they’d lost Léa, he held Sandrine in his arms and they made love. Sam was gentle, as if afraid she would break. She cried when it was over.

Her period hadn’t returned since the pregnancy and so she was nearly four months gone by the time she realized.

‘Women are quite fertile immediately after giving birth,’ her gynaecologist said.

It took her another fortnight to pluck up the courage to tell Sam. She was surprised he hadn’t noticed – her bump was getting prominent by then.

They were terrified. They didn’t dare to dream or hope. They didn’t make plans, but the baby’s room had already been decorated – for Léa. And so Antoine came along. Two days after his due date. Their miracle baby. A heavy, healthy baby boy.

Sandrine didn’t want to tempt fate again, but after a while she became anxious. What if something happened to Antoine? What if he got sick? What if she lost him? Her irrational fear that one day she might no longer be a mother grew stronger than her fear of having another miscarriage or stillbirth so she stopped taking the pill to see if anything would come of it. Something did. Maxime. She thought of her boys as her two princes, but never as the heir and the spare. She loved them both equally. But the fear she’d had of losing Antoine, which diminished gradually as the years went by, turned out to be founded in the end.

The media rarely mentioned it now. It was yesterday’s news. But that didn’t make it go away. Like everyone else in France, and the rest of the world, Sandrine had seen those images broadcast over and over again on the television. They continued, even now, to play on a loop in her head like a film she couldn’t turn off.

She’d added a sequence over time, the product of her imagination, based on survivors’ accounts. It showed what had happened inside the arena. There was no real footage of that. There had been no cameras. People filming the concert with their mobile phones had stopped when the first rounds rang out. The film in Sandrine’s head paused on the same frame every time, at the exact point where, in Sandrine’s mind, her son had lost his life. One second alive. The next dead. In a heartbeat. In the blink of an eye. In the squeeze of a trigger.

An invisible hand clutched Sandrine’s throat and she couldn’t breathe.

The woman stared from across the table. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, startling Sandrine out of her reverie.

Standing up on shaky legs, Sandrine grabbed her coat and handbag. ‘Goodbye. Have a nice day,’ she said automatically, her voice sounding unfamiliar, even to her ears.

The cold air hit her like a slap to the face as she stepped outside. She walked up the avenue, back the way she’d come. In the window of an estate agency, she caught sight of a slim woman, stooping at the neck like a question mark so that her shoulder-length lank brown hair fell over her face. It took Sandrine a moment to realize that this elderly woman, who was still clinging to her forties, was her own reflection. Forcing herself to stand tall, she peered into the window.

Unsurprisingly, there were no signs in the window of the estate agency for the winter sales. Almost two weeks into January, and the Meilleurs Voeux! stickers, wishing everyone a happy new year, hadn’t been taken down yet. Underneath it, glossy photos showed expensive flats for sale or for rent in the city centre. Sandrine gazed at them. She couldn’t afford to buy a flat in the city centre, and wouldn’t want to live here anyway. She liked the anonymity here, but she didn’t care much for the bustle and noise. She longed to go back to Brittany, to be near her parents, by the sea.

Then a thought burst into her mind. Why didn’t they move? What was stopping them? They could easily sell up here and buy a house near her mum and dad. Get away from it all. Sam could set up his business there easily enough. He’d come with her, wouldn’t he? Would she go if he didn’t?

But even if Sam did get on board, there was Maxime to consider, not that they saw much of him these days. He slept over at friends’ places most nights now, during the week, coming home once in a while to dump his dirty washing and pick up clean clothes. She’d failed one son; she couldn’t abandon the other.

Chances were, though, Maxime wouldn’t be living with them much longer. He planned to move to Marseille after his baccalauréat exams this summer. She would talk to Sam about this idea, sound him out. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that this was what they needed. A new home. A fresh start.

Sam was still at work when she got home. She made her way into Antoine’s bedroom. She’d cleaned it after his death, as though he were coming back any day and she wanted to welcome him home. She hadn’t washed the bedclothes, though. She climbed into his bed, pulling the quilt over her mouth and nose, and breathing him in. She often did this when she found herself alone in the house, but as the months went by his scent had faded and the covers smelt only of her perfume now.

Tears streamed down Sandrine’s face, rolling into her ears and onto Antoine’s pillow, as she lay on her back in his bed. Did he know how much he was loved? Or had they been afraid to love him after losing Léa? Had they spoiled him? Perhaps they hadn’t spoiled him enough.

She wasn’t aware she was tired. Not any more than usual, anyway. Sleep was something Sandrine had given up on. It had become irregular and elusive. She slept through the night only occasionally now, and when she did she felt less energized than if she’d lain awake for most of it. It wouldn’t have occurred to her she might fall asleep during the day.

She woke up groggy and disoriented. It took her several seconds to work out where she was and a few more to realize she wasn’t alone. Daylight had faded now and she could make out only a silhouette. Someone was sitting on the bed. Sandrine sat bolt upright and screamed.

‘Shhh. It’s me.’ Sam put one hand on her shoulder. In his other hand, he was holding a steaming mug, which he passed to her. She saw worry etched around his mouth and in the green flecks of his hazel eyes.

‘Thank you.’ She was touched by his thoughtfulness.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Sam didn’t ask her what she was doing in here, or if she came in here often. He must have worked that out for himself. Maybe he sneaked in here, too, when she was out somewhere.

Sandrine blew across the mug and sipped the drink, crinkling her nose. It was too sugary. Sam said proper mint tea was sweet and that’s the way he always made it.

They’d bought the house from a couple of elderly Moroccans, whose garden had a bed of mint running riot behind the clothesline. Sam had wanted to dig it all up. It took up too much space, he’d said, but Sandrine felt it was part of the legacy of the house and liked the smell when she hung out the washing, so instead they found recipes to cook with it and froze it so they could make herbal teas during the winter. The smell of mint and the memory it carried slowed down Sandrine’s breathing and heartbeat.

‘Sam, I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘When Maxime has finished his exams later this year, we could move away. I’d love to move back to Brittany. You like it there, don’t you?’ He didn’t answer. She tried to read his expression, but his face was inscrutable. ‘We could get a house near the sea,’ she persisted. She could hear the quaver in her voice.

‘My family’s here,’ Sam said.

‘Your family! Your brother is the only one who talks to you! And even he’s …’

‘He’s what?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

Sam’s face clouded over and Sandrine regretted her outburst. After all, it was because of her that Sam had fallen out with his parents. It had been cruel of her to use that as an argument. She put her hand on Sam’s to placate him, but he pulled away.

‘We need to stay here. For Maxime.’ The green blaze in Sam’s eyes belied his calm tone. In that moment she saw Antoine in Sam and had to look away.

‘Max plans to go to Marseille,’ she muttered.

‘We’ve already lost one of our sons,’ Sam continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘We can’t risk losing the other one.’ He got up and left the room, closing the door behind him and leaving her in the dark.

She set the mug on the bedside table and curled up again in Antoine’s bed. Oblivion. That was what Sandrine needed. She scrunched her eyes tight shut in an attempt to go back to sleep. But it was futile. Antoine’s face swam into focus as her imagination conjured up the photo she’d stared at earlier. She tried to hold on to that image, to zoom in closer. But it was as if, from behind her closed eyelids, her vision blurred and the colours faded to sepia. Her mind was playing a cruel trick on her, reminding her she would never see her son again.

Chapter 5

1 MONTH BEFORE

Laura

It wasn’t until she stepped out of the flat to go to work that she was reminded what day it was.

‘Happy birthday!’ It was her neighbour.

‘Thank you, Mrs Doherty,’ Laura said, locking the door to her flat. ‘It’s so good of you to remember.’

‘Ah, it’s an easy one to remember, so it is,’ the elderly lady replied. ‘It’s the anniversary of my husband’s death.’