The Red Notebook Part 2

'Absolutely not, no alcohol outside the house.'

'Lemonade?'

'OK.'

'What would Mademoiselle like?' asked the waiter.

'Fresh lemonade, two ice cubes, a slice of lemon and a straw.'

'Certainly, Mademoiselle,' replied the waiter, exchanging a look with Laurent.

Chloe glanced quickly down the street, then turned back to her father.

'Are you waiting for someone?'

'No, no, why do you ask?' She was immediately defensive.

'No reason ... I made a pot-au-feu.'

'Great! I love your pot-au-feu. Bertand often makes it in winter, and he always ruins it, he's such a d.i.c.k.'

'Please don't talk like that.'

Chloe said nothing and turned towards the lycee again. Bertrand was the new man in Claire's life. He was a photographer but only took photos of food. His clients ranged from the best delicatessens to the frozen food industry. Bertrand had no doubt dreamt of becoming the next Richard Avedon or Guy Bourdin, of having celebrities and models in front of his lens; but he had to make do instead with roast beef and forest chanterelle mushrooms or maybe fillet of hake with beurre blanc. But he had set up his own company employing six people, and he earned a good living, having cornered the market in high-end food photography. He never read a book, either fiction or non-fiction; all he read were articles on photography or food.

Laurent looked at his daughter: at the discreet make-up on her impeccable profile, the bridge of her nose p.r.o.nounced without being too dominant almond-shaped eyes, delicately drawn brows and shapely mouth. She had become a very pretty young woman. And she had Claire's hands, long and slender, with wrists so small that most watchstraps had to have extra holes put in them. 'You've got new bracelets?' remarked Laurent.

'You noticed? They're so pretty, they're from this really cool new website. I'm so happy with them.'

Two blonde girls with long hair, in miniskirts and Converse, backpacks over their shoulders, were walking up towards the cafe. The waiter ceremoniously presented the gla.s.s of lemonade with two ice cubes, a slice of lemon on the rim and a pink straw.

'Fab,' said Chloe, pulling her chair closer to her father. 'Lovely to be here, together,' she said, snuggling up to him ostentatiously.

'I'm always very happy to be with you; I'm proud of you too,' said Laurent, smiling.

The two girls stopped right beside their table. Chloe looked up at them. The girls gazed silently at her then turned to Laurent.

The girl with the shorter hair asked in an arrogant little voice, 'You're Chloe's dad, aren't you?'

At that moment, under the table, the pointed heel of a suede boot landed on Laurent's right foot. He froze, then felt a sudden pang. He turned to look at his daughter. He knew her too well not to grasp what the eyes fixed on his face were expressing: panic and pleading. 'Yes, I'm her father. And to whom do I have the honour of speaking?' was obviously not the desired response. In the fraction of a second he still had to answer, and as the heel was refusing to relinquish the pressure, Laurent had time to tell himself that surely his daughter would not dare ... And yet a little voice inside him replied: Yes, she would, Laurent. You know your daughter; that's exactly what she would do. What else could this mean?

So he turned slowly to the girls and, smiling coldly, replied, 'Why do you ask that, Mesdemoiselles?'

'Well, uh ... because ...' stuttered the girl with the longer blonde hair.

'He's not my dad, he's my boyfriend,' announced Chloe proudly. 'Perhaps we could be left on our own now?' she went on, pretending to be irritated, and withdrawing her boot from her father's shoe. The two girls both took a step back, without taking their eyes off Laurent.

'Very sorry,' murmured the longer-haired girl.

'Sorry,' added the other, who had turned pale, 'we're leaving.'

Then they hurried across the road, side by side. Laurent watched them walking away on the opposite pavement. They were talking agitatedly and then one pushed the other in rage. 'I've never been more embarra.s.sed in my life,' she screeched up at the darkening sky.

'They'll be slashing their wrists tonight,' Chloe said sardonically.

Pa.s.sing her father off as her boyfriend! Chloe had gone too far. But as they drove home, all Laurent's arguments were rebuffed one by one by Chloe: he had no idea; in Laurent's day everything had been different. Laurent's ideas were prehistoric; back in his day there were no mobile phones and you had to be rung up on your parents' phone; boys were terrified of pretty girls and the worst they ever did was get hold of Playboy and goggle at the double-page spreads of naked women in suspenders in s.e.xy poses. It was nothing like that now. To listen to his daughter was to imagine that, apart from her best friend Charlene, her school was entirely populated by narcissistic b.i.t.c.hes, who only ever talked about painting their nails. As for the boys, they were just a bunch of psychopaths who spent their entire time watching hardcore p.o.r.n on the internet and then offering to practise what they'd watched on Chloe. But the scene in the cafe had rendered Chloe 'untouchable'; no one would dare proposition her now; she would be left in peace. The news, now verified, that she had a handsome, much older boyfriend would be all over the lycee in seconds in fact, it was probably already on Facebook.

Yes, people had asked her who he was, on the few occasions he had come to collect her from school. Yes, one day she had said he was not her father; yes, she had asked him to sit in that exact spot in the cafe on purpose so that those b.i.t.c.hes would see her with him. No, she hadn't thought they would actually dare speak to them. And thank you for going along with it, you're awesome.

'Awesome,' grumbled Laurent.

Then when he heard, 'Anyway, you should be super flattered,' he was torn between slapping her and forgiving her. In the interests of a pleasant evening, he opted for the latter.

'What on earth is all this?'

Laurent had gone into the kitchen to heat up the pot-au-feu and Chloe was at the card table.

'The contents of a handbag,' said Laurent from the kitchen, before joining Chloe in the sitting room. 'I found it in the street.'

'I'd love to have that lipstick, but Maman won't buy it for me,' murmured Chloe. 'And that mirror, so pretty!'

'It was stolen. There's no ID, just the personal items they're all there.'

Chloe was running her hands over everything, touching the keys, the dice, the Pariscope, the heap of stones. She opened the red notebook at random.

More things I like: Summer evenings when it gets dark late.

Opening my eyes underwater.

The names 'Trans-Siberian Express' and 'Orient Express' (I'll never travel on either).

Lapsang Souchong tea.

Haribo Fraises Tagada.

Watching men sleep after making love.

Hearing 'Mind the gap' on the Tube in London.

'I'd like to find her,' Laurent announced. 'And the only clue I have is that,' he said, indicating the dry-cleaning ticket. Laurent had thought quite a lot about the issue of the dress. He had come to the conclusion that he would have to visit all the dry-cleaners' within a radius of about a kilometre. His thinking was as follows: Laure had had her bag stolen; the man had run off with it, then, once he was a few streets away, he'd rummaged in it, removing the purse, the bank card and the ID, which could be sold. He'd also grabbed the mobile phone, and perhaps one or two other items of value, and then abandoned the bag on top of the bin, before making off. Laurent had found the bag in the morning, so the theft must either have happened shortly before, or in the night. If that a.n.a.lysis was correct, there were then two possibilities. Either Laure had been pa.s.sing through the area, or she lived there. She would presumably have gone to a dry-cleaner's relatively near her home, perhaps a dry-cleaner who knew her name. So if she lived in the area, the dry-cleaner's would be nearby.

'Look at the things, Chloe. You're a woman what do you see that I've missed? Perhaps there's something there that could lead me to her.'

'You really know nothing about her yet?'

'I know her name is Laure.' In the kitchen the pressure cooker began to hiss. 'I'll be back,' he said. The pot-au-feu was beginning to bubble. In a few minutes he would add the vegetables he had part-cooked the night before: carrots, potatoes, leeks, turnips, celery, and two marrow bones.

'It's signed!' cried Chloe.

Laurent smiled as he took the plate of vegetables out of the fridge. He had introduced his daughter to reading from a young age. They had progressed from Marcel Ayme's Des Contes du Chat Perche to Harry Potter, and from there to Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and then on to poetry Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Prevert, eluard before returning to fiction and Proust, Stendhal, Camus, Celine and others before finally tackling contemporary authors. If he had achieved one thing with Chloe's education, it was to instil in her a love of literature. Now Chloe made her own literary discoveries without his guidance. Recently she had been on a 'Mallarme trip', declaring his epic poems 'better than Alain Baschung'.

He tasted the broth off the tip of the ladle, added a pinch of salt and then tipped in the vegetables. Twenty minutes on a low heat and they would be cooked to perfection. He opened a bottle of Fixin and poured himself a gla.s.s just as a text came through on his mobile. Dominique. She hadn't replied to his text of the evening before, nor the one two days earlier. 'See you this evening?' she had written. Laurent took a sip of wine. 'Having dinner with my daughter,' he texted back. There was no reply.

Chloe appeared in the doorway and leant against the door frame.

'Taste this,' he said, holding out his gla.s.s to her. 'Burgundy, Fixin, Reserve Monseigneur Alexandre 2009, a gift from a customer.'

She swirled the wine about and breathed in the aroma as he had taught her, then drank a mouthful, indicating her approval with a slight nod, just as her father did in restaurants.

'She must be in her forties,' began Chloe. 'Judging by her make-up, never mind her choice of chic designer bag. A thirty-year-old wouldn't choose that, and an old hag wouldn't even know about it.'

'Don't talk like that, Chloe. You're not at school any more. But go on,' said Laurent, taking another sip.

Chloe sighed, then continued, 'She's very attached to the past the mirror is ancient, a family heirloom; perhaps it was her grandmother's. And she uses an unusual perfume no one wears Habanita any more she writes weird things in her notebook, she has a book signed by an author you admire ...' Then she concluded with an ironic smile, 'She's the woman for you.'

'I expected more from you when I let you see the bag,' replied Laurent coldly.

'OK,' said Chloe, 'no need to get worked up. You're probably on the right track with the dry-cleaner's, but you can do much better than that.'

'I'm listening,' commented Laurent, attending to the cooker.

'You should go and see Modiano.'

When Laurent shrugged, she said, 'I'm serious, you have to ask him. He's the only one who's seen her, he must remember her.'

'I don't know Modiano, Chloe,' said Laurent, lowering the heat under the pressure cooker.

'But you know hundreds of writers. He lives here in Paris surely you must have a way of reaching him?'

'I think he lives near the Luxembourg Gardens, but I don't have his address.'

'Ask his publisher.'

'Chloe, they would never give it to me.'

'You'll have to find a way, he's the key.' Chloe grabbed his wine gla.s.s from the table and took a sip.

'Are you in love?' she asked after a moment's silence.

'Who with?' replied Laurent, lifting the pressure-cooker lid.

'The woman with the red notebook.'

'Of course not. I'd just like to give her bag back. Bring the plates through.'

Chloe put the gla.s.s down and picked up the plates from the worktop. 'How's Dominique?' she asked quietly.

'She's not really speaking to me at the moment,' Laurent said gloomily.

'Did she see the handbag?' Chloe immediately asked.

'Why do you ask?'

'Because if she saw it she'll have freaked out.'

Laurent looked at her, ladle in the air.

'She might have been worried that you wanted to meet the woman,' amended Chloe, enunciating carefully.

Laurent served the pot-au-feu. 'Let's talk about something else.'

Two hours had pa.s.sed. The pot-au-feu had been declared 'the best in the world' and the message to Dominique had remained unanswered. Chloe was now curled up on the sofa in socks and T-shirt. She was watching reality TV. Women city-dwellers had come to meet farmers with the rather dubious aim of seducing them and eventually settling down with them. Between the discovery of cows' udders and bucolic walks in the forest, the improbable couples revealed their feelings on camera, with no detail spared. How these men who lived in tiny remote villages, unable even to ride their mopeds in front of their neighbours' windows without being immediately identified, could expose their shameless, cringe-making pick-up attempts to millions of viewers was a mystery to Laurent.

'What I meant was ... I do really like you ...' were the timid words of one strapping lad with a crew cut.

'You do?' said the woman wonderingly. 'I'm very touched, Jean-Claude, but how can I put this ... Let's just be friends.' Then she added brightly, 'We could write to each other.'

The farmer had taken this hard. He'd stared out at the horizon of the Auvergne hills obviously not enthralled by the prospect of an epistolary relationship.

'Are you angry with me?' simpered the woman, with the same intonation as a mother refusing her offspring another biscuit.

'No, of course not,' muttered Jean-Claude.

'How long are you going to be watching that garbage?' asked Laurent.

'It's not garbage, I love it,' replied Chloe. Her mobile rang; her friend Charlene must be watching the same programme. 'You're right, totally, he looks like him, it is him,' cried Chloe before going off into hysterical laughter.

Laurent recalled his conversations with Pascal on their parents' phones when they had been at the lycee together. If there was one thing that defined adolescence it was hysterical laughter. You never laughed like that again. In adolescence the brutal realisation that the world and life were completely absurd made you laugh until you couldn't catch your breath, whereas in later life it would only result in a weary sigh.

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Question Good morning Jean, Quick question was it you who told me you often saw Modiano in the Luxembourg Gardens in the morning?

Laurent From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Hi Laurent, Yes, it was me. I saw him again last week. And your email is well timed. I see from electre that you still have a copy of Paul Kavanski's eloge de la Beaute. One of my regular customers is desperate for it today. Could you put it aside for me?

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] I've put the Kavanski behind the till for you. What time do you see Modiano and where exactly in the gardens?

From: [email protected] To: I'll tell my customer to come and collect it; his name is Marc Desgrandschamps. Thank you! I usually see Modiano about 9 a.m. I often pa.s.s him in front of the Orangerie. Why do you ask?

'I'm not sure I can help you. I can't really remember ... Wait, yes ... I do remember something. Yes ... two weeks ago, perhaps a bit longer ... behind Odeon; it was raining; she stopped me in the street to ask me to ... sign her book. She took it out of her bag. She seemed a little shy, or ... ill at ease. No, that's not it either ... it was obvious she wasn't in the habit of doing that sort of thing; nor was I, for that matter. We were both of us a bit ... you know ... We weren't quite sure ... what to say to each other ... There was a rather wonderful yellow light, probably a storm coming ... She must have been about forty, she was wearing a sort of black raincoat, she had brown hair to her shoulders ... very light-coloured eyes, grey maybe ... and a pale complexion; she was very pretty. It was raining ... her face was wet ... she had a very beautiful smile, wasn't very tall, with a beauty spot to the right of her upper lip. She wore lipstick ... red, of course, but with a hint of coral and high-heeled shoes with straps. No tights ... at least ... that's what I remember.'

He paused. Laurent stared at him. Only Patrick Modiano could tell you he didn't remember the woman he had met in the street then immediately go on to give you a description that would have delighted any police force in the country. 'Thank you,' said Laurent in a low voice.

Modiano continued to look at him with that trademark expression of concern. 'But now I wonder why you're asking ... and why you waited for me in the Luxembourg Gardens. Has something happened to her?'

Why indeed? Laurent preferred not to think about that too much. What's more he had had three espressos and a vin chaud at Le Rostand to give himself courage. It was the second day he had staked out the Luxembourg Gardens. He was like one of those pa.s.sionate ornithologists who will watch a rare bird through their binoculars without even taking a photograph of it because the very sight of the creature is recompense enough for long days, or even long weeks of waiting. For Laurent, the rare bird was the winner of the 1978 Prix Goncourt. Yesterday, no Modiano had shown itself in the park and, on the stroke of nine-thirty, he had returned to his arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. Today he had risen at dawn and had been hanging about the Orangerie since seven o'clock until the tall figure had appeared at the end of the path. Getting up from his bench, Laurent had experienced the racing heart of a true enthusiast finally setting eyes on the large-beaked warbler. Actually, it was even stronger than that: it was as if he had just spotted a specimen of the mythical dodo, unseen since the end of the eighteenth century.

The author of Villa Triste was ambling, hands in raincoat pockets, apparently looking towards some far-off point on the park horizon. A slight wind ruffled his now grey-white hair. Laurent, clutching a copy of Accident Nocturne, started to walk towards the author. He could not summon a suitable phrase with which to deflect Modiano from his onward path. He would have to start by catching the man's eye, he was thinking, when the writer's gaze met his own. Laurent smiled at him and was rewarded with a fleeting smile in return. Then the words seemed to speak themselves: 'Good morning, excuse me,' began Laurent as Modiano stepped imperceptibly aside like a startled pet preparing to flee when you move to stroke it. Laurent held out his copy of Accident Nocturne like an ID card, right in front of Modiano. 'Don't be alarmed,' he said, 'I just have a question to ask you. My name is Laurent Letellier; I'm a bookseller, but it's nothing to do with that. It's just that I'm trying to find someone.'

Patrick Modiano smoothed the collar of his raincoat and looked at Laurent in mild confusion. 'Oh? Yes, go on, I'm listening.'