Chapter 6 - The Little Liar

Lisa was already thirty minutes late, and Alice was growing impatient. She still had three visits at the county jail, a call to make to an examining magistrate, and Chrystel had emptied the box of Kleenex. Naima came in looking annoyed. Lisa Charvet had finally arrived, she said, but she wasn’t alone. She had her father with her.

“He’s insisting on meeting you.”

That was all she needed. Alice straightened her blouse, smoothed the crease in her pants, and went to the waiting room. She could tell at a glance that the situation was tense. Lisa avoided making eye contact with Alice, but her father jumped up when he saw her.

“Laurent Charvet. I’d like to speak to you.”

Alice extended her hand.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m listening.”

“I have nothing against you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for my daughter to change her attorney now. And I’ve told her that. Laurentin has always given Lisa—and us—his complete support. We owe him a lot. And the important thing is he knows the file inside out, he’s been on the case since the start and he’s very competent.”

Laurent Charvet then made a strenuous effort to soften the bluntness of what he’d just said: “Not that I’m questioning your competence in any way, of course. But the trial is in less than four months, and I’m sure you’re already very busy …”

Lisa didn’t look up.

“Your daughter is an adult,” Alice said. “So it’s up to her to decide what she’d like to do. It’s probably best to let her think about it and postpone this meeting.”

“I don’t want to,” said Lisa, her voice quavering.

“What don’t you want?” asked her father.

“I don’t want to postpone. It’s for me to choose. I want you to defend me.”

She was looking Alice right in the eye.

“You need to leave us now,” she told her father quietly.

The door to the office closed. Lisa was sobbing.

“I tried to explain. He just wouldn’t give up, right from the start. He said he didn’t understand me, and I don’t know what came over me, but it all came pouring out. I threw it in his face—that he’s never understood anything anyway. That I knew as soon as it started that he was cheating on my mom. And I kept it all to myself. I had that weighing on me for the longest time. And do you know the worst part? He acted like he didn’t hear any of it. The only answer he could come up with was to say that I was fragile because of what I went through!”

Her tears had dried now.

“It felt so good just now when you said it was for me to decide. Did you read my file?”

“Yes. Do you feel ready to get to work?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me about the fifteen-year-old you.”

“I hated myself.”

“That’s not unusual at that age.”

Lisa remembered the withering contempt in her sister’s expression when she’d caught her simpering in front of the bathroom mirror with too much eye makeup on and her mouth painted red. “You look ridiculous,” Solène had said.

All the anger she felt against this older sister, who made their parents so proud, bubbled up again inside, along with the disappointment she could read in her mother’s face and the feeling of being stifled at home. When she walked out the door, she became someone else, she took on a persona, free and provocative. What else could she do in a town where nothing ever happened? Appealing to boys was the most interesting thing she found. And it wasn’t even hard. If she’d been the older sister or if she’d had a brother, things might have been different. But it was what it was, she was the little sister, the position of best daughter was taken, and even her dad—when he was home—seemed to like her less.

“How about you?” she suddenly asked Alice. “Have you always lived here?”

“No, but it’s been nearly thirty years now.”

Alice had spent her childhood and most of her teens abroad at the whim of her father’s work and had not returned to France until the year she sat for her baccalaureate. She’d met her future husband in lectures at law school, and he’d been as devoted to his home region as she was footloose. She’d followed him there. The children had come along, they’d bought the house on the island … Alice had felt she was putting down roots for the first time. One of her forebears, an admiral, had gone down with his ship off the coast there, and his name was engraved alongside the other seamen on a stone in the cemetery. When her marriage had started to fall apart, she’d certainly considered returning to Paris, but hadn’t wanted to burden her children with further disruption. And anyway, she had her own practice, she couldn’t see herself going back to working for someone else.

“Where are you from?”

“Paris.”

“Well, then you won’t know what small-town boredom feels like.”

This was true, Alice hadn’t experienced that, but she’d definitely seen plenty of this brand of teenage boredom since she’d been doing her job. In fact, it was a hell of a breeding ground for clients.

“I became the school whore,” Lisa blurted.

“You’re a victim, Lisa.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“No. Just because a teenage girl has urges, she doesn’t need to feel she’s in the wrong.”

“I know that. But it explains a whole bunch of stuff that happened.”

Alice picked up her pen. She remembered the lyrics of a Bénabar song: “For lots of you / I was the first / one of the first to count / but not all that much.” Why did girls always have to feel guilty?

A bright shaft of sunlight fell on the file open on her desk.

“I’m guessing you saw Mrs. Valette’s name a lot in there,” said Lisa.

“Yes. She liked you very much …”

“Me too. First of all, she was pretty. There was—I don’t know how to explain it—something pure about her. Her husband too. He was very tall, he’d always be carrying their child against his stomach whenever I saw them in the street. They always held hands. But mostly it was because she was happy. I had her for two years in a row in high school. She wasn’t like the other teachers, she really was interested in us. It’s even thanks to her that I’m called Lisa. One time she asked us to write this essay about what we’d like to change about our lives. Well, that was easy for me, I wanted to change everything. The place I was born, my house, my mother, my sister, and my name, Laurine. At home they also called me Booby because I was a baby. Laurine or Booby, I hated both. At least Solène is a beautiful name. I added a postscript to the essay: ‘Please call me Lisa.’ It was my middle name, my favorite grandma’s name. I got a really good grade. Mrs. Valette read my essay to the whole class. And then everybody started telling stories about their names. I said I was being totally serious, I really wanted to change my name. My mom was upset, my dad and Solène didn’t give a damn, I toughed it out and I won.

“The other teacher you would have seen in the file, Mr. Boehm, was also new, like Mrs. Valette. I had him for history. He was skinny, losing his hair, he never yelled. He found it hard to command respect. He was in his own world, he never even knew what was going on at the back of the classroom. Should I tell you what we did?”

“If it’s relevant to the case …”

“He used to show us documentaries. The classroom was in darkness … and we made the most of it.”

Lisa remembered the first time. It was during a film about the Second World War, and she was sitting between Seb and Jérémie. Seb took her hand and flattened it against his jeans. She stroked him for a while through the fabric, then he undid his zipper. He had an erection and she rubbed him up and down. Jérémie watched them, laughing.

“For me the worst part was when I saw Mr. Boehm’s face right after. He’d just turned off the projector and was still emotional about the film, talking about it passionately. I was ashamed. But I did it again several times. The boys didn’t ask me for anything, they just took my hand.”

Bénabar’s lyrics form an echo in Alice’s head. “I wasn’t the kind of girl / anybody would woo / I was one of those girls / who go ahead and do.”

Lisa kept talking and her expression changed the whole time. It was like the landscape flitting past through a train window, by turns windswept or still, vast or cramped. Alice noticed the small snowflake scar that chicken pox had left between her eyebrows, directly above the bridge of her nose. Her daughter Louise had one the same. A remnant of childhood, but the teenager had been erased.

“I was in love with Seb, he was kind, he was the first boy who kissed me, but whenever we found somewhere to be alone together, Jérémie and Ryan would show up. You know, in a town like mine there aren’t too many places for teenagers to meet up, so everybody knew them. At first, I liked being the only girl with three boys. I could see what I did to them. It was because of my breasts. They’d just suddenly grown over the summer. I was proud of them. At least I was ahead of the curve on that, my mom and my sister never had breasts like that. We listened to music, smoked cigarettes or rolled a joint, we chatted, I knew what they were waiting for, there was always this moment when I knew it would happen. I did what they wanted but I only let them touch my top, never my bottom half. That was how I dealt with it, I convinced myself I was in control, and I knew more about them than they did about me. What their erections were like, the shape and smell of their penises. I hope this doesn’t shock you. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Maybe because you have breasts too …”

Alice automatically adjusted the neckline of her blouse.

“We’ve strayed a little too far from the subject. But we’re going to stop there for today.”

“Pity. I still have so much to tell you.”

As she left the room, Lisa added, “I’m real glad you’re my lawyer.”

Alice had just set off when her mother’s name appeared on her phone screen. She’d taken to calling more and more during the day.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you …”

“Nothing serious? I’m kind of busy. I just had a meeting at the office and I’m heading over to the county jail.”

“Ah. And what was this meeting?”

“A very talkative client, quite disturbing actually. A little younger than Louise. Rape victim.”

“Another rape! My poor darling, I don’t know how you do it. That’s all there is these days. In my day, we didn’t talk about it so much. I wonder if that was better. You must be tired of it, aren’t you? I personally couldn’t be less interested in all that business!”

A light drizzle began to fall. The parking lot was full, it was family visiting day. Alice cut the engine and just sat there for a few minutes with the car key in her hand. Around her, children jumped in puddles and were scolded by their mothers. Women in veils stooped under supermarket bags full of washing. A little girl with braided hair watched over a warmly swaddled baby shrieking in its stroller. A gaggle of young men with their hoods up stood aside to let a frail old man pass. Under the roof of a bus shelter a girl wearing too much blush adjusted the low-cut top of her red minidress and changed from sneakers into heels.

Alice went over to the security gate.