Prologue
It is an ordinary Monday evening just like any other. Down at the police station in a small suburb of Paris, the duty officer Didier Parmentier is flicking through the newspaper. It’s been a quiet evening so far: one complaint about a late-night disturbance, even though it’s not even 10 p.m.; a report of a lost wallet; a fight at a nearby bar. It looks like it’s going to be another long night with only the crackle from the scanner and the periodic comings and goings of colleagues on patrol for company. No matter: Didier has it all planned out. He folds up the newspaper, switches on his iPad, begins a game of solitaire. Just to warm up. Then he’ll get down to business: Tetris, Max Awesome, and Angry Birds Friends. Later he’ll log on to Facebook to check what’s going on, maybe chat with a virtual contact or a real-life friend.
The sound of the phone ringing makes him jump. He looks up from his iPad and picks up.
“You’ve reached the police. How may I help?”
On the other end of the line, he hears a woman speaking very quietly, somewhere between a whisper and a gasp. Her voice is shaking. She sounds petrified.
“Please, you have to come quick! I heard a noise downstairs . . .” she begins the second Didier has finished his formulaic introduction.
She pauses, wary, as though listening out for something. She sounds genuinely afraid, her voice a whisper, choked with fear. A gulp of terror. It sounds like she’s trying to be as discreet as possible for fear of being heard. Behind the icy timbre of dread, her breathing is ragged and panicky.
Didier can hear the urgency in her voice, how desperate she is to be heard, believed, and reassured.
“I’m right here, madame. I’m listening. What seems to be the problem?”
“You have to come, right away. I can hear a noise downstairs. Someone’s broken in. I’m pretty sure it’s my neighbor . . .”
“Your neighbor? Have you been having issues?”
“Please, I beg you, don’t leave me here on my own! I think she’s come through the yard. Through the back door. She hates me. She’s threatened me a few times already. I think she might actually want to get rid of me.”
“Try to stay calm, madame, we’ll be there right away. I need your name and address.”
The woman gives him her details, almost succumbing to full-blown panic when Didier asks her to spell out her surname. He tries to be reassuring, urges her to remain calm, promises a patrol car will be there in no time.
“Please, please hurry, I beg you! And if I don’t open the front door, break it down!” she whispers, her voice hoarse with fear.
Didier is about to offer to stay on the line until his colleagues arrive, when the line is suddenly cut. Right away he radios all the necessary information with instructions to get there as quickly as possible.
“What was the reason for the call?” an officer asks over the radio.
“Some kind of neighbor dispute. Sounds serious.”
Chapter 1Several weeks earlier
For the third time that morning, Tiphaine went into Milo’s room, quietly and without knocking. She planted herself at the foot of his bed and, in an irritated tone of voice, addressed the pillow beneath which the teenager had buried his head.
“It’s almost noon! It really is time to get up now. Fix yourself something to eat, and then get down to work. Your exams start tomorrow.”
The total lack of response that followed this command drew an exasperated sigh from her.
“Now!” she said sharply.
An irritable grunt escaped from the bottom of the bed, beneath the quilt. Puzzled, Tiphaine picked up the pillow and saw, instead of a head, two feet. Rolling her eyes, she turned to address the other end of the bed.
“Can you hear me, Milo?”
“Mmmmh . . .”
“Listen to me, if you have to repeat the year for a second time . . .”
“Okay, okay, I’m getting up . . .”
Somewhat surprised he was giving in so easily, Tiphaine hesitated a moment then perched expectantly on the edge of the desk. After a few seconds, a head finally emerged from beneath the quilt and looked at her blearily.
“What are you doing?” Milo muttered.
“I’m waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“For you to get up.”
His face froze for a split second as if the neurons inside were struggling to make the connection.
“I told you I’m getting up.”
“I heard you. Now I want you to do it.”
More silence.
“Pain in the ass . . .” he muttered, slinking back under the covers.
“Don’t speak to me like that, Milo!”
Tiphaine heaved a sigh; verbal confrontation was a direct line to a full-blown fight, and she didn’t have the heart for another one right now. Milo was fifteen. The age of rebellion and for getting into all kinds of trouble. She couldn’t possibly let him lounge around in bed any longer: his exams began the following day, and it was pretty clear his priorities were not the same as hers.
Tiphaine got to her feet, weighing up the pros and cons of the idea taking shape in her mind. Eventually she grabbed the quilt and yanked it toward her. Brutally deprived of his cozy, warm cocoon, the teenager sat up and bellowed:
“Hey! That’s not right. You can’t do that!”
“Get up!” she ordered, halfway out of the room already, dragging the comforter with her. She walked briskly down the corridor, aware of the shuffling sound of a body staggering out of bed.
“Give it back!” Milo yelled after her.
“Come and get it,” she replied without turning around.
She could sense Milo behind her reaching for the quilt. The next moment she almost toppled backward as he pulled it toward him. Thrown off balance, she had no choice but to let go. Milo angrily snatched up the comforter and gave her a filthy look.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” he snarled.
“Calm down, Milo!” she retorted, trying to regain the upper hand.
“You’re not my mother!” He’d already turned and
was halfway back to his room.
“No, but I am your legal guardian. And, until you’re eighteen, I’m—” Tiphaine didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Milo slammed the door in her face.
“Responsible for you,” she muttered under her breath.
She was indeed responsible. For a great many things. Many more than she could bear to admit.
Many more than Milo would ever be able to forgive her for.
It had been like this for eight years. Eight years of being imprisoned in the abject desolation of guilt. Worse than prison. She’d learned to live with—had forced herself, up to a point, to cope with—the secrecy, guilt, and lies. In a way, it had simply been a matter of getting used to it. A matter of survival. Some obscure instinct held her thoughts in check every single day, kept her from sinking completely into madness. Most important of all, it enabled her to save what could be saved. In other words, Milo.
For eight years, the boy had been her sole reason for getting out of bed in the morning. Without him, she’d have put an end to her life long ago. She had made choices and done terrible things, and nothing had turned out as she had thought it would, deluded as she was by a grief that never dimmed, despite the passing of time. And whenever Milo, in moments of anger that with adolescence were growing increasingly frequent and intense, reminded her that they had no blood ties, Tiphaine had to struggle with all her might against the temptation to give up.
“You’re not my mother!”
And yet she had done everything to be that. Absolutely everything.
Including the worst thing of all.
Chapter 2
A little later that same day—it was early afternoon, and Milo was munching his way through a bowl of cereal—Tiphaine caught sight of her new neighbors for the first time. Her attention was drawn by a moving van maneuvering in the street outside. She turned away from Milo and his breakfast to stand by the window and watch the comings and goings.
It wasn’t hard to spot the only two women among the movers. One, despite her obvious efforts to look younger, must have been around forty, while the other couldn’t have been more than fifteen, despite her obvious efforts to look older. Both were in T-shirt and jeans, although the girl’s top was a good deal shorter and tighter than the woman’s. There was no doubt of their relationship: mother and daughter, moving together in lockstep, picking up and carrying inside the boxes they were able to lift.
Instinctively, Tiphaine looked for a man who wasn’t wearing overalls with the moving company’s logo. There wasn’t one that she could see.
“Cute ass!”
Tiphaine started in surprise. Milo was standing behind her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, turning away from the window.
“Same as you: checking them out.”
“Have you finished your breakfast?”
Milo nodded.
“Then get down to some work.”
The young man gave a sigh and ambled nonchalantly back upstairs. Tiphaine waited till he’d left the room before returning to her observation post.
The girl was cute. She had the poise of a teenager enjoying her body’s metamorphosis, relieved that her interminable childhood was at last coming to an end. One of those girls who is delighted to discover the advantages of her budding curves. Who understands instinctively that real life is finally about to begin.
Apples don’t fall far from the tree—the mother was also very pretty. She was tall, slim, and elegant, with all the assets of her North African heritage: olive skin; long, dark hair; and deep, black eyes. She exuded the self-confidence of an older woman aware that she had not yet reached her sell-by date. She walked back and forth between the truck and the house, never slowing her pace, telling the movers which rooms they were to store the boxes and furniture in, and encouraging her daughter to keep going. She looked nice, Tiphaine thought.
It wasn’t a surprise that there were people moving in next door. It was five months since the owner, Madame Coustenoble, had died, and her heirs had immediately made it clear that they were going to rent out the property. Tiphaine knew the house like the back of her hand; she and Sylvain had lived in it for several years, until the tragedy that had destroyed their lives. The “events,” as she and Sylvain had taken to calling that terrible period, which they’d agreed, quite openly, never to speak about again. After the “events,” they had obtained custody of Milo, the son of their next-door neighbors, David and Laetitia. They had been good friends, who had shared everything: Friday-night drinks, barbecues, laughter, secrets.
And then horror.
Milo was seven when Tiphaine and Sylvain became his legal guardians. In this capacity, it was their duty to draw up a full inventory of the boy’s assets, which included his parents’ house. As his guardians, it was their responsibility to manage it, and within a few months they had made the decision to live there. This was, as they saw it, the obvious solution: moving out of the house in which they’d suffered the most appalling tragedy a parent can ever experience. The house where their little boy, the love of their lives, the quintessence of joy, had been born. Maxime. Every corner held some memory—a look, a smile, the smell of him. His
voice, too, the way its echo resounded incessantly within walls that stood like informers—walls that ensure you never forget. Ever. Intolerable grief that borders on madness.
Maxime.
An angel who had not been allotted the time to spread his wings.
Their fallen angel.
They gave notice to their landlady, Madame Coustenoble, who, rather than trying to find new, reliable tenants, decided to move back in and end her days there. A project she successfully accomplished eight years later.
After her death, her heirs did some building work on the house: while she had been alive the old lady had always rejected every proposal that Sylvain, who was an architect, had ever put forward. There were builders onsite for over a month, and then Tiphaine had watched the round of visits of potential tenants. For the last couple of weeks things had gone quiet, and she’d begun to suspect they would soon be meeting their new neighbors.
The mystery of who they might be was a source of deep anxiety for her; it was the first time since the “events” that a new family was going to move in, take over her former home, and make it their own, relegating the history of the previous tenants definitively to the past. And, despite the suffering she had experienced every day for eight long years, there was nothing Tiphaine dreaded more.
Of course she was apprehensive about the kind of people they’d be. A couple of retirees who’d complain that the wind was blowing smoke over the hedge every time she and Sylvain had a cookout in the backyard? Or, worse, a young married couple like she and Sylvain had been when they’d moved into the house seventeen years earlier? This possibility terrified her: the thought of two young people, madly in love, turning up thinking the house would be the perfect place to start a family. She couldn’t bear to have to listen to the wail of a baby or the chuckles of a toddler coming from their backyard. As long as Madame Coustenoble was alive, she’d been safe from this unbearable possibility. But now the old lady was gone.
Lost in thought, Tiphaine gave a brief, mirthless smile: so these were her famous new neighbors. Two women, assuming that the absence of a man wasn’t due to a demanding job or a debilitating illness. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been: a young, lovestruck couple with a beaming toddler, an insufferable picture
of happiness whose cloying whiff would waft over the hedge and up her nose. And the cherry on the cake: the presence of a pretty young lady with a captivating smile seemed a good omen. Milo had noticed the teenager right away, and his spontaneous reaction, however indelicate, at least indicated curiosity on the part of a young man who was by nature withdrawn and solitary, and rarely inclined to seek out the company of people his own age.
All in all, the arrival of these two women was a pleasant surprise. Or at any rate the least bad eventuality. Which was about as much as Tiphaine dared hope for nowadays. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
