Chapter 12 - The Little Liar

Alice couldn’t get to sleep. She’d left the window open a crack; the wind was whistling and the beam from the lighthouse swept her room with its milky glow. She shouldn’t have talked about Lisa over dinner. Her daughter was right, she always had to show off.

It had all started well, though. When Romain and Adele appeared at the end of the path, their room in the cabin was ready for them and the table set, the potato gratin was almost finished browning, and the fire was crackling in the hearth. It was one of those evenings on the island when you realize that it’s already nighttime everywhere else, but here you could still see, almost as if in broad daylight. Alice was sure she would grip them with Lisa’s story. When she was surrounded by her children’s friends and they could tell she was on a roll, one or the other of them would often issue a warning: “The two of us are used to it, you don’t need to worry. Ever since we were little kids, we’ve seen her come home fuming because the client she was defending was given too harsh a sentence. And then when we ask her what he did, she says, ‘He killed his father with a hammer, but he’s a such an endearing guy.’”

Alice had always loved this, seeing an adult’s face full of the same anticipation as a child hearing a bedtime story. Except that her stories were true. She’d gotten carried away with Lisa. She’d mentioned legal errors and “social crime”; she’d painted damning portraits of the teachers, the judge, Laurentin, and their oh-so appropriate and oh-so right-on convictions; then a portrait of Lisa, of her painful journey, and of the courage it had taken for her to break away from her role as victim. At first, Romain spurred her on, asking for details, but then he’d fallen silent, discomfited by his girlfriend’s expressionless face next to him. Adele had been quick to get up and clear the table, crashing the plates together and cracking one of them. She hadn’t even apologized and had gone outside for a cigarette.

When she came back, Romain was doing the dishes and Alice was sitting in her favorite place, by the fireside. Alice had put a tray on the chest that served as a table; she’d chosen Romain’s best-loved mug that he’d had as a child, the white one with the blue edging, the broken handle, and his name painted on it in black. For Adele, she’d taken a precious Japanese ceramic from its case. They could just help themselves to a tea bag or herbal infusion from the tinplate caddy, there were options for all tastes—Alice was not yet familiar enough with Adele’s preferences. She’d put another log on the fire and was anticipating continuing late into the evening.

She wanted to say more about Lisa, particularly to a girl who was hardly any older than she was. If Louise had been there, she would definitely have bombarded her with questions. Adele was leafing through a book. To rekindle the conversation, Alice had said that she found the case fascinating.

“It asks a lot of questions about the times we live in …”

Yes, she’d plowed on, it forced people to wonder how come a young girl was so readily believed by so many adults.

Adele had shot her a suspicious look.

“Right!” she said. “Because it was better before, when nobody believed them? Well, I prefer today’s version, where girls and women can speak out about being raped. Nobody lies about something as serious as that. It’s impossible. She never would have accused a man for no reason. Battered women withdraw their charges too. But they are victims.”

“Impossible? Why would it be impossible? How can you make a statement like that? You see, I’ve been doing this for thirty years. And, if you’ll forgive me saying so, if there’s one thing I know, just one, it’s that we should be wary of certainties like that.”

Alice had become impassioned. She’d adopted that imperious, grandiloquent voice that often made her friends tell her she’d gone too far—“Hey! Stay with us, you’re not in court now!”

Adele had stared at her grimly.

“If this girl did lie, then it’s worse. Precisely because she was lucky enough to be believed—unlike so many others. She’d do better to keep quiet. It’s not the right time for this.”

And why the hell had Alice not held her tongue instead of replying, “Because you think there’s a right time for the truth?”

“The truth? What truth? Yes, she’d do better to keep quiet! Because women all over the world finally have the courage to speak up and call out men’s behavior. Because they’re not scared anymore. And tough if not everybody likes it. Tough for anyone who benefited from the old ways for such a long time. It’s those women who need support! Not this total loser who—”

Romain had stopped it in its tracks.

“Come on, we’re going for a walk,” he’d said, taking Adele’s hand.

He’d turned around to Alice and crucified her with his eyes. She couldn’t believe it. Her son! Her son, who hadn’t made a single move to support her, who was scuttling away like a coward to avoid upsetting his girlfriend! To think he bragged that his mother wasn’t such a conformist as other people’s. He always acted all proud when he brought friends to court to listen to her pleading.

She should have been more cautious. Romain had already mentioned that Adele found it shocking that she defended rapists. Defending all of them, even the bastards, especially the bastards—that was the mindset she’d grown up with. But it meant nothing to an Adele who kept coming out with the word “sisterhood” but still dared to label a woman younger than herself stupid on the grounds that she would cast a shadow over what other women said! Was that what being a feminist meant now? And what did Romain think? Did he huddle sheepishly and guiltily in a corner of the bed when Adele had her period, trying to have stomach cramps as bad as hers?

Alice suddenly felt very alone. And definitely old. She’d inherited the pill and the freedoms that other women had won. And here she was being accused—by girls of barely twenty-five—of settling for that. Of not fighting for new advances in the feminist cause. She was from the in-between generation, shoehorned between the intransigence of Adeles—and sometimes of her own daughter Louise—and the unbearable frivolity of a fragrant, coquettish mother who sighed, “Oh, why on earth would these women want to go to war against men? I never minded when someone whistled at me in the street.”

Even now it pained her when her mother put on that sad little look and said, “Do watch your appearance, my girl, you don’t take care of yourself. You’re not feminine enough. You should wear dresses more often. And heels. They make your legs look longer and more shapely, you know. Yours have always been a little short below the knee.”

She’d often lost her temper with her about it. Alice snapped at her that she’d had a hard enough time bringing up her children single-handed as well as working a tough career. That for years she’d had to tolerate chauvinism from male colleagues and their crass jokes. Oh, the number of times she’d heard them quip, “I got the feeling your defense was excellent, but it’s a shame, you know, from the back of the court you couldn’t be heard. You women will never have the voice for it.” That had gone on right up until mics were installed in courtrooms. In the early days, male colleagues took pride in pushing theirs aside—“I don’t need this,” they would roar—and female attorneys felt a tad pathetic for needing to use one. But at least their voices carried without being forced, without rising shrilly; and, imperceptibly, the art of pleading had been altered by this. Nowadays, it was the old baritones who seemed grotesque with their actorly declamations and on-demand rage.

Alice had earned her place and took great pride in that. If other women were still bemoaning their lot as the invisible associates of a big boss man when they did all the work for him, tough luck for them. They should just take risks, as she had. Twenty years ago, there hadn’t been many women who’d dared to open their own practice. That was her feminism! Could she at least raise this point with Adele? That it had taken Alices to break down the barriers? That thanks to women like her, no one could say that female attorneys were less talented than their male counterparts? Damn, that was something!

Alice didn’t fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. When she woke, her sheets were drenched with sweat and her complexion blotchy. Then she saw her bottle of hormone gel on the shelf in the bathroom and felt well and truly depressed. She stuffed it angrily into the bottom of her washbag. It wouldn’t take long to pack her bag, and the next boat didn’t leave for a couple of hours, so she had time to make herself a nice breakfast. She leaned against the wall with her face in the sun and tried to calm herself. She pushed Lisa out of her mind and made a mental list of the files waiting for her on her desk. She needed to visit Gerard so she could look his sister in the eye with a clear conscience; lay siege to the court’s administrative office to—finally—get a copy of a file for which, at least, she could be sure she’d be well paid; and file applications for the release of two kids from the projects that she’d been dealing with for seven years. Now those were boys it was really worth fighting for.