Chapter 9 - The Little Liar

Lisa took a letter from her pocket and put it on the desk.

“Here, it’s for you.”

Alice unfolded the handwritten page.

Marco Lange is innocent. I made up a story because I was in a difficult place at school. I didn’t think of all the consequences it would have. I’m prepared to explain myself before the court. I ask forgiveness of Marco Lange and everyone else.

“I wanted to put it in writing. Then it’s … I don’t know …” she cast around for the words, “more concrete.”

Alice made a point of intervening as little as possible. She cast her mind back to the anecdote about the woman who’d wanted Jean to hand her over and remembered an expression he’d used: “I wanted to hear the music she was playing.”

She was doing the same thing with Lisa, trying to hear the music, its slow movements and its staccatos, its silences, its harmonies and discords.

“I went for a sleepover at Marion’s one evening. Since her mom had gotten sick, she was doing everything around the house. It made her more serious. She’d felt distanced from me for a while. We turned out the light and were chatting quietly under the comforter so her mom wouldn’t hear. We talked about all kinds of stuff, our favorite TV series, other girls … At one point she said that people were saying things about me at school. She asked if it was true that I did stuff with several boys. I can’t explain it, but it gave me like an electric shock right through my body. I was convinced Ryan had shown people the video. I thought that soon everyone would know, and it would be the only thing anybody talked about in school. I puked on the floor. I felt like I was emptying myself out completely. Marion was horrified, she didn’t understand what was happening to me. I told her she’d really hurt me, and she didn’t know what I was going through and it was disgusting to tell tales like that. And then it just came out, I said I’d been raped. We spent the rest of the night crying together. She wanted to know if it was a boy at school and I said it wasn’t. She didn’t dare ask too many questions, she was scared. So I started talking, I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted her to pity me. I told her I couldn’t tell anyone else because it was all my fault and if my parents found out, they’d never forgive me. I made her swear not to say anything. The next morning, I couldn’t remember everything I’d told her, but Marion was my friend again. And right then, that was all that mattered.

“I just hated myself, not because of what I told her but for all the things that had driven us apart. I wanted to be like I was before, so no one could say I was the school whore anymore. That girl wasn’t me. I could see Mrs. Valette had her suspicions and I wanted her to pity me too.

“That was when we had the meeting in the staff room. Pauline Valette brought me there. When we arrived, the history teacher was talking to Marion. They made me sit down on this kind of little sofa, next to the photocopier and the coffee machine. Mrs. Valette said they were there to help me and if something serious had happened to me, I should say so. I’d never seen Mr. Boehm like that, all hunched over next to me. Mrs. Valette held my hands, you wouldn’t believe how warm hers were. Marion was crying. They were all so kind. I felt—how can I put this—cocooned. I wanted it to go on forever. I just sat there, not moving. And they didn’t say anything either.

“Then Mrs. Valette asked me if someone had hurt me, if I’d been forced to do something I didn’t want, and I said yes. And it was true, all that was true. I just wanted to stop that video. Mrs. Valette squeezed my hands harder and harder. I could hear Marion sniffing next to me. That was when Mrs. Valette asked if what I’d told Marion was true. She asked me, ‘Were you raped, Lisa?’ and I said yes again.”

But Lange? Why had she accused Lange?

“It all happened so fast. They wanted to know if it was someone in my family, so I said no but I told them again that it was an adult and I didn’t know anything about him. Afterward, my mom asked me so many questions, she asked where I’d met him, what he looked like, how old he was, whether she knew him, where it had happened. I didn’t know what to tell her. So, to get out of that situation, I said he was threatening me and I couldn’t give his name. Even when my parents told me Lange had been taken in for questioning, I still thought it would all stop.

“It was my dad who told me. The doctor at the hospital had given me some meds, I felt like I was floating in cotton wool. My dad had canceled all his trips so he could be with me. He had a fight with my mom and said I just needed peace and quiet. I was lying in my bed and could hear him coming up the stairs, being careful not to make them creak. He put his head around the door to see if I was sleeping. Whenever I called, he would come running to see if I needed something. He would bring up hot chocolate with too much cocoa in it, but it was still good because he’d made it. He wouldn’t leave until I’d finished it, he would stroke my forehead and kept saying, ‘My little Lisa, my tiny little Lisa’ over and over. I’d never seen him cry before. Later, he even brought his computer up to my room to work. He set himself up at my desk, which was too small for his long legs, so he had to keep changing position. He tried to make as little noise as possible when he typed. He would turn around and smile at me. It felt so good, the two of us like that. It was like all my fears had evaporated. Even Solène was kind to me.

“So when the police asked me if it was Lange, I said it was. When he was working at our house, we were often alone together. I used to watch him. At first, I remember thinking he was coming on to my mom. This is going to sound ridiculous, but at one point, I wanted him to notice me too, to think I was better than her and better than Solène.

“Then he began scaring me. Whenever I saw him in the street, he would look at me weirdly. He said crude things. I also knew there were rumors in town that he drank a lot and got into fights. One time he drove me home in his car. I’d lied to my mom, saying I was with Marion when I’d been at the outdoor activities center with the boys. It was raining, I was late, I’d missed the bus and was walking home, knowing I would be bawled out. He saw me on the road and offered to give me a ride. I don’t know why, but I got the feeling he knew stuff about me. He said, ‘You smell of sex.’ He deliberately brushed my thigh when he used the gear shift. He could see I was panicking, and it seemed to turn him on. And then I don’t know what happened inside his head, but he didn’t say anything else and just dropped me off at home.”

There was something that kept nagging at Alice. Lisa had gone out for a cigarette, and she waited for her to return so she could discuss it with her. It was the letter that Lisa had sent to the examining magistrate some months after the beginning of the case, asking for a meeting with her. She’d then made new accusations against Lange. She hadn’t told the whole story the first time around, she’d explained. And it had been at that point that she’d described attempted sodomy.

“It’s even worse than you can imagine. But first of all, I need to tell you about the magistrate. Her name was Julie Delmont, and the first time I saw her, I was disappointed. She looked like any other woman; I could have seen her in the street or at the supermarket. That wasn’t what a magistrate was like in my mind. I remember as I walked in, I saw the label on her coat, which was on a hanger. My mom had one by the same brand. And also, I think she fell in love with my attorney, Laurentin. She listened to him, they always seemed to agree on things. I did everything I could to be invisible when they talked about me.

“I was way more scared of her court clerk, who was older. She was a heavy lady, she reminded me of the school nurse, Mrs. Chekri, who I hated. So the clerk sat to one side, by the window, at a desk even smaller than the magistrate’s. Every now and then she’d peer at me over her glasses, like she didn’t trust me. Now that everything I said was being put down in statements, I was careful. As far as possible, I avoided making proper sentences.

“The second time I went there with my attorney, I noticed that the magistrate had styled her hair. Laurentin told her she looked very elegant, and she blushed. Laurentin himself must have spent hours getting ready. Everything matched, even his socks. But what I really remember were his hands. Mine looked so ugly in comparison; my nails were chewed right down.

“So, the letter … It must have been in May or June. Laurentin had called my parents to tell them that Lange was out of prison. They were furious, angry at the justice system for not protecting me. Laurentin explained that a different judge had made the decision and that Lange was barred from the whole region around my home, so I had nothing to be afraid of. Exactly the opposite happened. I thought that if people found out, they’d think he was released because I’d lied. Quite something, huh? Right then, the worst thing I could imagine was people not believing me anymore. In fact, I’d ended up convincing myself that everything I’d described was true. I knew Ryan was calling me a compulsive liar at school. It drove me crazy. So I wrote the magistrate, asking to see her.”

“But you didn’t think about Marco Lange? About coming face-to-face with him?”

“Of course not, that came after. When the magistrate summoned me and Laurentin. She said that Lange’s attorney was insisting on this face-off, and she couldn’t refuse it. Laurentin said it was a trap, that they’d use it to put pressure on me and I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to it.”

“What did you do then?”

“I stopped eating. I even had to be hospitalized. They fed me through a tube, and I tried to pull it out. All I could think of was that face-to-face meeting. I was obsessed with it. I had dreams of people coming to take me from my bedroom, dragging me into a room with him, and I’d start screaming. The nightmares kept coming when I was back home; I woke my parents every night. I don’t know if you’ll understand. I was dreading that meeting, but I think I was also hoping for it. It was like this wall on the horizon. A huge wall that would make everything stop. I decided that, afterward, I’d run away. Or commit suicide. That’s what I thought about in that magistrate’s office when she mentioned the face-to-face to my attorney. They asked what I thought, and I said I’d rather die.

“I remember their faces so clearly. They both turned to look at me at the same time, and I shrank back even deeper into my chair. The magistrate looked emotional—I don’t know if it was for me or my attorney. It was after that that she wrote to Marco Lange’s lawyer to say I wasn’t fit to deal with it.”

Lisa gestured toward the handwritten letter that she’d put on the desk when she arrived.

“Now do you see why I wrote that?”

Alice tried not to show her own turmoil. This was no time to weaken.

“First of all, Lisa, you need to speak with your parents.”

“That’s rich coming from you!”

The mental picture of Lisa’s father being asked to leave the office hovered between them.

“They need to know. Now. Until you’ve told them, I haven’t heard a word of this.”

“I thought of all that. But I’ll do it after the trial.”

“That’s impossible. They’ll be giving evidence.”

Lisa froze, her face turned away toward the window.

“My mother will never believe me. My father … Pfff … I don’t know how my father will react. He walked, he abandoned us. He only thought about himself. I can’t forgive him.”

The profound moments in our lives are never how we imagine them. A young woman only just into adulthood was gambling part of her life by going back on the accusations that had put a man in prison, and Alice didn’t know what to say to her. All she wanted was for her to pick up her backpack and leave. Her emotions were so tangled: her sense of urgency when she thought of the man who’d been wrongfully convicted; the exultation at playing a part in repairing an error of justice; the gnawing fear of the ordeal that lay ahead for Lisa. Would she, Alice, be able to protect her from the storm that her letter would unleash? It all hung by a thread. But it was a tremendous case. There weren’t many like it in an attorney’s career.