Chapter 17 - The Little Liar

The cat had taken revenge for too many hours alone by destroying a cushion. Now, it jumped onto the table and played with a pen among the papers that Alice had spread out in front of her. The French door was ajar. The honeyed smell of wisteria drifted in from the garden.

Under the halo from the lamp, the annotations, crossings out, underlinings, arrows, exclamation marks, plus signs, and all the other cabalistic little symbols that made her writing even more indecipherable made the pages look terrifying to her. What would she do with it all? With this hodgepodge of words accumulated over the two days of the trial? Tomorrow, she would make her defense.

The courtroom came alive in her mind’s eye. She could see the position and expression of each juror. She hadn’t had time to find a nickname for all of them. Pignol; Droopy; Mrs. Ramrod; Donald Sutherland; Lizzo, for the curvaceous young health care assistant who reminded her of the singer whom she’d recently discovered thanks to her daughter Louise; Shyboy, for the truck driver who always let everyone else go first when the door opened and was last to reach his seat, looking as if he didn’t want to disturb anyone. It was to them and them alone that she should talk.

I know a thing or two about you. Your names, your ages, your jobs. It all features on the list we were given on the first day. You all remember that first day, don’t you? I’m going to confess something to you, I love that part. The rattle of the wooden counters in the ballot box, the judge picking one out and reading out your number. Your faces just before you master your expression again and get up to walk out in front of us. Chosen, you were chosen, and you know it because others before or after you were turned away.

I’ve been watching you for two days. Two days is a long time to be sitting, very publicly, listening. You were advised to make notes. You were told they would be the only thing you could take with you for your deliberations. I tried to work out why one witness and not another, one turn of phrase and not another caught your attention. You were also told you must never show what you’re feeling. No smiles or laughter, no sighs or tears. Impassive. You were asked to be impassive. That must be what really struck you at the beginning. Nowhere except for the criminal court are men and women asked to turn themselves into statues of stone. And actually, you didn’t succeed.

I think I spotted the things you found irritating, those you found interesting or moving. Lisa Charvet didn’t move you. Quite the opposite, in fact. You’re angry with her, aren’t you?

So am I.

Alice opened the first pages of the investigation file, reread the notes in her notebook, and took a new sheet of paper.

Lisa is in ninth grade, she’s fifteen. Her dad is around less and less. Her older sister, Solène, is away doing a competitive college-prep program. At best she comes home every other weekend. Their mother is very busy, the company she works for is twenty kilometers away, she leaves the house at eight every morning and comes home late in the evening.

Marco Lange is thirty-two. He worked at the Charvets’ house for two months. He’s angry with them. He’s angry with the mother, because she never looked at him, she treated him with contempt, and she dismissed him. It was his last construction job, after that his boss fired him. In fact, Marco Lange is angry with everybody. Women, bosses, girls, boys. So he drinks, and when he drinks, it just gets worse. He’s a nasty drunk. He can’t stand other people’s happiness.

When he was building the pergola, he often looked up toward Lisa Charvet’s bedroom. Such a pretty girl. Yet another one who wouldn’t be his. He knows she’s scared of her mother and she must be lying to her when she goes out with boys. He also knows that she’s often home alone. And that’s convenient because he forgot a tool. He rings the doorbell.

Lisa comes and opens the door. And that day she notices that Marco Lange has a funny look in his eye. A look that her mother had often noticed too. She’d told her daughters to be careful. But pretty, young fifteen-year-olds aren’t careful.

Alice had Lisa’s statement in front of her.

“He hugged me and kissed me, he started running his hands all over me and he … put his hand in my panties. I was paralyzed, I couldn’t move … He took out his penis, he got ahold of my head and forced me. Another time he pushed me against the banister on the stairs, I fell to the floor and he threw himself on top of me. He pulled down my jeans, I fought but he was twisting my arm behind my back. With his other hand, he pushed my buttocks apart, he kept cursing at me because I was moving too much. He was hurting me, and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to lift my head and he smacked it onto the floor tiles. Then he stood up. I didn’t dare move. He said he knew everything about me. He threatened me. He said he’d punish me if I told my parents about it.”

Lisa doesn’t say anything. She goes back to school. She’s ashamed. He would never dare do that to Solène. So it must be her fault. And anyway, who would believe her? Everybody at school says that Lisa Charvet really likes boys. “She’s good. A real dirty bitch,” they snigger. “Watch this!” in a corner of the schoolyard someone’s playing a video. So Lisa doesn’t say anything. But luckily for her there’s Mrs. Valette. She’s not like the other teachers. And she’s new too, so she didn’t know Solène. It’s the first time Lisa hasn’t been compared to her older sister, who’s so brilliant and who so impresses teachers.

Mrs. Valette is the first to realize something serious has happened to Lisa. She’s grown fond of this lively student who writes so well. But she can see that she’s changed. Lisa hands in her homework late. She’s wasting away. She avoids contact with other students. She hides her body. And Mrs. Valette isn’t the only one to be concerned. Lisa collapsed in history class. Then again in science class, the day they were studying reproduction. There were drawings of men’s and women’s genitals on the big screen in the classroom. Mrs. Valette opens up about this to the principal. who couldn’t give a damn about Lisa Charvet’s fainting fits. He has a school to run. He knows everything about life. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. With teenagers, he’s seen it all, he’s seen thousands of them come and go. Dramas are normal with them, there’s nothing to worry about.

You know what happens after that. Thanks to the unfailing commitment and compassion of Pauline Valette and François Boehm, Lisa eventually told the secret that had been eating away at her. And I entrust her to you.

Alice delivered the last line out loud. The cat opened its eyes and focused its yellow stare on her. It sat up, half-heartedly licked its chest and then went back to where it had been, curled in a ball under the warmth of the lamp.

That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is what I thought I would tell you after I read the file that Lisa Charvet brought me. You would have gone along with me, wouldn’t you? Oh, how pityingly you looked at Lisa Charvet when the judge read out the summary of her allegations against Marco Lange. You must remember that. It was yesterday morning. Also try to remember the man in the dock when you saw his face for the first time, flanked by two police officers. One of those guys—we all know the type—you wouldn’t pick them up if they were hitchhiking and you wouldn’t want to come across them on the street alone at night.

And those two teachers! Again, try to remember the first impression they made on you when you listened to them. They were wonderful, weren’t they? Not like that old school principal, who took so little interest in the well-being of his students.

I know how you felt, I know because I felt it myself. A girl of fifteen couldn’t have invented that. She repeated it once, twice, three times, she never changed it. The two experts who examined her—you heard their reports, ladies and gentlemen of the jury—confirmed that her words were perfectly credible and showed no signs of confabulation.

That was where we stood yesterday morning. That was before Lisa’s letter.

Alice didn’t need to read it again. She knew it by heart. “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 who believed me.”

She’d watched the jury so closely at that point that the image was filed in her mind, as clear and precise as a photograph. Mrs. Ramrod with her pen poised. Donald Sutherland’s eyes open wide. Complete astonishment from Lizzo. Shyboy with his mouth agape, not sure he’d heard right. Pignol clinging to the judge’s face as if to a buoy.

Lisa’s words turned everything upside down. And in a few hours’ time Marco Lange will be acquitted. There’s no doubt about that. You’re lucky. You have nothing to ponder now. Nothing to weigh up. Doubt favors the defendant, and when there’s an element of doubt, they must be acquitted. The penal code dictates it. So, when you’re asked, “Was Marco Lange guilty in 2017 of imposing and attempting to impose acts of sexual penetration—to wit fellatio and attempted sodomy—on Lisa Charvet by means of violence, coercion, threats, or the element of surprise?” you will say no. I could stop there.

And why didn’t she stop there? A trial is a file, a debate, a deliberation, and, at the end of it all, a decision. Guilty, not guilty. Victim, not a victim. Lisa had lied. Lisa said that she’d lied. Lange couldn’t be convicted. It was the judicial truth. And that was the only truth that mattered.

You, too, can now recite Lisa’s words by heart. You’ve heard them so many times. Once, twice, three times, five times, they’ve been read out to you! I think there are a few missing. Did you notice that too? Lisa says that Marco Lange is innocent. She doesn’t say, “I wasn’t raped.” She says, “I made up a story because I was in a difficult place at school.”

So we need to go back to the school, to the ugliness and violence of high school …

Alice was sure that the jury would be with her on that. Who enjoyed their time in high school? That implacable sorting station where the truck driver and the care assistant sitting next to him realized that school wasn’t for them and they wouldn’t be getting on the same train as the other, more gifted students. That place of humiliations and sniggering when a brain struggles to learn or a body is too fat, too thin, or too short. That graveyard of parental hopes, and the site of their children’s disappointment. Even for good students, it’s a time they’d rather forget.

High school is war. Heroine one day, pariah the next. There are alliances, betrayals, negotiations, and reconciliations. And then it all starts over. Everyone permanently on their toes. No victory is ever achieved. Any glory is short-lived. The exact same girl with whom you’ve sworn your friendship to the death drops you without a second thought for someone else who suddenly seems like a better option in the schoolyard.

Not to mention that this was in a small town!

When Alice drove through these sleepy places crushed by their own inactivity, the stores along the main streets closed down, their windows painted over with limewash and smothered with flyers for a traveling circus or a house-clearance service, she often thought about the teenagers who lived there. Lisa had told her about the lingerie stores in the town where she grew up. “There were three of them, like they were the only stores that made any money, along with hairdressers and cafés.” Be careful with the small-town thing, Alice cautioned herself. Several members of the jury could be offended.

The thing is, Lisa dreamed of getting away from the small town where she was born. She envied girls she hung out with on the beach during the vacation who lived in real cities. Everything they had was better in her eyes. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence when you’re fifteen and things aren’t that great with your parents. And your breasts have just shown up. Lisa hasn’t said enough about that, but it’s a very important part of this case.

I’d be surprised if you yourselves haven’t known a girl who was too young and had breasts that were too big. Perhaps she was you, ladies. Or perhaps that girl was your best friend, or the person you hated the most. And for you, gentlemen, I’m sure there will have been one who made an impression. I think somewhere in all of our teenage memories there’s a girl with big breasts.

Alice had her own example. She’d been thinking about her since first meeting Lisa. It was during one of the few teenage years she’d spent in France, in a big city in the south. The girl’s name was Corine, she was one year behind and had sharp features and very crooked teeth. But it wasn’t her face that people saw first, it was her breasts. Wet-nurse’s breasts on a child’s frame that was altogether too straight and too narrow. One day Alice invited Corine to spend the weekend at her house. When she went to meet her at the bus stop she was terribly embarrassed: Corine was wearing a thin acrylic turtleneck that made her breasts look even bigger, and she’d painted her nails black. Alice must have been fourteen or fifteen, but right then she looked at Corine through her mother’s eyes. She could anticipate the maternal verdict. Not a respectable girl. She hadn’t foreseen the look in her father’s eyes though. They met on the stairs. Her father was whistling—he always whistled when he descended the stairs. When he saw Corine behind Alice, he stopped dead. He looked at her differently, in a way Alice had never seen him look before. He looked with a man’s eyes, rather than a father’s, at this girl who was only a bit older than she was. It lasted a fraction of a second. It was forty years ago now, but she remembered the scene as if it had happened yesterday.

The memory had already resurfaced once, like a lightning bolt. Agnès, one of the girls from her high school days, had come up with the idea of tracing the class. She must have been bored out of her mind, working a humdrum job, divorced and mother to two thankless grown-up boys. She’d spent months tracking people down, scouring Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. “It was easy with you, Alice, you’re out there on Google,” she’d said. She’d set up a WhatsApp group—“Our Saint-Ex Years”—and that was how a group of fifteen nearly fifty-year-olds had ended up getting together one Saturday in May over sausages on the grill in Agnès’s garden. At one point, Frédéric threw Corine’s name into the conversation. “Corine’s breasts! Do you remember Corine’s breasts?” They’d all laughed heartily. Everyone had an anecdote to tell, but no one knew what had become of her.

Lisa had real breasts. Her classmates’ were laughable in comparison. Sure, they tried to push themselves up, but underneath they were flat-chested, or maybe had modest curves. Lisa’s breasts were assertive, they arrived before she did. The boys started looking at her differently. And this marked her out. And it’s quite something to be marked out in high school. She was proud of them at first.

Alice looked through her notes from the trial.

“You know, girls … it was easier than these days,” Sebastien Faivre had said.

Lisa hadn’t said no to them. Or not emphatically enough. And that was all it had taken for those young assholes.

For months Lisa kept thinking that if she’d been born somewhere else, if, for example, she’d been one of the girls from beautiful houses, the sort she met on the beach in the summer, it wouldn’t have been like that with boys. Perhaps she was wrong. But her friends were Seb, Jérémie, Ryan, and boredom. Oh yes, boredom! If it’s ever summoned to be tried, no courtroom would be big enough to handle the case!

And you’ve seen those boys. They said so themselves, they had “dicks in their heads.” Well, that’s bound to not leave much room for thinking. And then there was the video. Can you imagine what the shame would have felt like at fifteen? The terror represented by a few minutes of humiliating footage?

Alice needed to come back to that conversation in the staff room.

There’s something else I need you to remember. When you’re in high school, the staff room is a sanctuary. It’s almost as taboo as your parents’ bed. And it was here that Lisa was confronted by two teachers she respected and the friend she’d just gotten back together with. Let’s spend a while there, on that sofa, between the photocopier and the coffee machine. They ask her if anything bad has happened to her. If someone has hurt her. She says yes. She’s telling the truth! They ask if she’s been raped. She says yes again. Is she lying?

Alice wasn’t sure whether to go any further. To stand in for Lisa and describe the fear Ryan inspired in her. Their mothers knew each other, they saw each other at their gym class. One time when Ryan had come to pick Lisa up at home, he’d spent a while chatting to Bénédicte Charvet, who’d then told her daughter she thought he was very nicely brought up. Lisa hadn’t replied. How could she have explained to her mother? But they’d all heard that “No!” that she cried out when Sebastien Faivre said that she’d been “okay with it.” Perhaps Alice should pursue the point. It would be so reassuring for everyone. Meaning Lisa only half lied. But it wasn’t her job to substitute one culprit for another. And Lisa hadn’t asked her to. That was her choice.

She took another wad of paper from the pack.

When you’re labeled as the school whore, when even your best friend keeps her distance and the other girls—the treacherous little goody-goodies—give you sidelong glances, and the boys brush past you saying, “I heard you’re good!” and “Will you do the same for me as you did for the other guys?”—how do you get out of that?

There’s only one way, just one. You have to become a total victim. That redeeming, purifying word. The word that transformed Marion the mistrustful into a tearful best friend. And reassured Pauline Valette, the dazzling Pauline Valette, whom Lisa so desperately didn’t want to disappoint …

Alice was tempted to come down heavily on Pauline Valette. She was sure that the ex–Department of Education woman on the jury had found her exasperating. Pauline Valette had that good-girl vibe, the sort to make pasta salad for everyone, to have clusters of children clinging to her legs, to bring a smile to older people’s faces and to drive everyone home after a party because she didn’t need alcohol to be cheerful—the woman probably even laughed when she did the dishes. Alice would leave this pleasure to Théry. He must have been preparing his defense speech right now too. He would be putting a lot of effort into it this time, it would be his swan song.

Get back to the word “victim,” she thought.

The word that brought an abrupt end to the boys’ taunts. That made Ryan erase the video he still had on his phone. That devastated her mother. And softened up her sister. And brought her father home. How could anyone not like this word, and the status it confers? So, yes, Lisa Charvet liked it. She even liked it so much that every time it threatened to get away from her, she reinforced it.

Alice was getting to the hardest part: Lange and everything that Lisa had said about him in her allegations against him. The jury had heard what her mother said, they knew she was the one who’d given his name. But why had Lisa confirmed it? At the exact same time, she’d found out that her father was cheating on her mother. He, too, was lying, to his wife and daughters. It was a violent discovery, which offered an explanation, but it wasn’t enough. She’d heard her mother complaining about Lange and saying that she and Solène should be wary of him. He himself had been coarse with her at the worst possible moment, when things were starting to go so badly for her. But was that enough to justify her letting a judge send him to prison without reacting? Enough to stop her crying out when he was actually sentenced?

Yes, Lisa confirmed Lange’s name. And that’s still unfathomable, even for me, who’s defending her. But once the name had been put out there, I can understand what happened next. All the adults around Lisa leaped on it. The police officer, who with a few clicks on his computer, discovered that Lange had a criminal record. His former romantic and professional contacts, who were more likely to say bad things about him than good. His friends, barflies who only added to the image. The experts—psychologists and psychiatrists—who painted a devastating picture of him. All those adults couldn’t be wrong!

At this point she would talk about Laurent Charvet—she’d underestimated the man.

There was one person who had his doubts when it could all still have been stopped. Lisa’s father. But he didn’t say anything. You heard what he had to say. Perhaps you wondered what you would have done in his position. Which of you can honestly say you wouldn’t also have kept your doubts to yourself? You see, that’s what’s so terrible but also wonderful about a trial. At first, you can’t understand how something so dramatic can have happened. And then, the closer you look, the more you think that, perhaps, the same thing could have happened in your own home.

And then Lisa was put under pressure to be consistent. She told you about that. Whatever she’d said she then needed to confirm. That was what was expected of her. Confirmation. Not a retraction. If she hesitated, allowed anyone to think she couldn’t remember, at best they would just frown, at worst they’d tell her it was only natural if she didn’t want to remember because of the pain it was causing her. Her pain was proof. It was THE proof. Because yes, Lisa was in pain. She was in agony because she couldn’t extricate herself from her lies. She told you: “The more I lied, the more painful it was. But the more pain I was in, the more they believed me.” How does a fifteen-year-old get out of a vicious circle like that?

Would that be enough? Théry had scored points when he mentioned those one thousand, one hundred ninety-five days that Lange had already spent behind bars. “Think about all the life you’ve lived in that time. Relationships, the birth of a child, a grandchild, a change of job, retiring, a new home, buying an apartment, a house, vacations, trips, evenings spent with family, with friends …” Alice had seen him use this shtick several times. She’d even borrowed it from him, and it never failed to have an effect on people who heard it for the first time.

Just think how differently you feel about Lange now. He’s still the same man. But now he’s the victim.

Alice needed to remind them of every image in this role reversal. The anxious, tormented Lange of the early stages, his hunched back and slumped shoulders barely appearing above the dock, but as the evidence came out, they’d gradually straightened until the bench and the jury could see his face. Lange, who could have roared and cursed at Lisa, Lange, who had grown calmer when he knew that people now pitied him. And while the man in the dock had grown taller, Lisa had started to cower.

Have you seen what a fragile thing certainty can be? The teachers whose vigilance was praised have now been lambasted for their naivete. The curmudgeonly, suspicious principal is now commended for being wise and cautious. The certainty that was established so solidly yesterday has been replaced by another. It’s the same process that’s at work. It’s just going in the other direction.

Alice stood up to make another cup of tea. She talked quietly while the water simmered in the kettle. The jury had been presented with a twenty-year-old woman, not a girl of fifteen. They hadn’t seen her as she had in the privacy of her office, white-faced and falling apart as she spat out her truth. They’d found her too pretty, too full of life, not broken enough.

So, when Lisa is asked, “When should we believe you, Miss Charvet?” well, I think you know the answer. When she wrote that letter, she not only withdrew her allegations, she surrendered her status as a victim. And she’s now asking you for it back. Can you imagine the strength and courage that takes?

Maybe you think she’s unbearably insolent. But it was a very wounded young woman who answered the district attorney’s questions. Wounded by the disapproval she can feel around her. And perhaps she’s also an angry young woman. When she sat back down after giving her statement, do you know what she said to me?

“It’s like I’m bothering them.”

Yes, Lisa bothers people. Because she lied when she accused a man of rape. Lisa Charvet’s timing isn’t good. Her timing’s never been good. First of all, she was a girl of fifteen who was so proud of her breasts that she couldn’t fail to look like a whore to any man or boy who met her. And now it’s worse. She had no right to lie. Because this isn’t the right time!

She was coming to the end. It had taken so little for two lives to be blown apart. A teenager’s boredom and angst, the casual cruelty of a few schoolboys, two teachers wanting to do the right thing, an overhasty police officer, a self-important judge, some pernicious small-town rumors, a mother’s prejudiced convictions, a father’s guilty conscience. Alice would tell the men and women of the jury that she trusted them to understand all this and not come down too heavily on Lisa. She would tell them that you’re not guilty if you lie when you’re fifteen. That the really disturbing thing in this case isn’t trying to understand why Lisa lied but why so many people wanted to believe her.

At the end of the day, there are no guilty parties in this case, only good intentions.