She has lost track of how long she’s been listening to Olivier Chedubarum. Yawns twist her mouth out of shape, but she is unable to control them. She has had several glasses of wine, or maybe only one, which she is finishing off now. She has to go home. Her legs are dragging her down. She is in a taxi. She has said goodbye to Olivier Chedubarum, she no longer remembers what he said to her. This time tomorrow she’ll also be in a taxi, but in London, with him. As she lies down on her bed, she thinks of a bushy-haired puppet called Big Ben.
She opens her eyes. Remembers. Sticks the face of the alarm clock up against her bleary eyes. Several long seconds go by before she can focus on the slender hands. When she finally makes them out, the world around her suddenly shrinks, leaving only the narrowest slit through which to try and escape the inevitable. 8.10, ten past eight in the morning. Horrible horror. How could she have let it happen? If she had the time, she’d punish herself by giving her head a good bang against her bedroom wall, but she only has twenty minutes to get to the station. She puts on the clothes she finds on the floor, then her coat, slings the sports bag and her handbag over her shoulder, looks for her keys, hears objects dropping to the floor without knowing what they are, finds her keys on the kitchen table, battles with her feet and shoes to get the former into the latter, glimpses 8:15 somewhere, opens the door, locks the door, rushes down the stairs, in the street, quick glance to the right, to the left, hesitates, searches her mind for the shortest route to the station, begins to run. The bags knock against her sides, she does her best to hold them in place, but the tighter her grip the harder it is to run. She brushes up against several passers-by, who give her long stares, she would like to shout insults at them, she sprints at the crossings to avoid red lights. Her heart is knocking around in her chest. Fire spreads across her forehead, temples, cheeks. A stitch is stabbing her in the belly, she breathes out forcefully to soften the pain. Her legs are weighed down by the alcohol still circulating in her blood, her stomach is begging for food, her brain distracts her by churning out thoughts. Don’t miss that train, no matter what, don’t stop, get as far as customs, want it enough to make it, even if you have no more breath, keep running until the end, until the meeting place, run, don’t stop, find him, go faster, faster still, get there, don’t miss that train. Her métro pass isn’t in her bag, her métro pass is in her bag. She feeds her ticket into the machine and starts running again. People are in front of her, they don’t get out the way, they’re stupid and slow, wrapped up in themselves, wearing earphones, deep in conversation, they all want to stop her from getting there. Excuse me. She calls out the words from a distance so they’ll reach their target before she does and she can run past the obstacles without slowing down. She has to stop on the platform to wait for the métro. The tracks go all the way to the station. She’d climb down into the tunnel and start running in the dark and the damp to get there on time. The beating of her heart resounds in her eardrums, every fold of her skin is brimming with sweat. The whoosh of the train, the approaching headlights. She gets on. She would like to do something to make the ride go faster. She forces herself to catch her breath, she’s bright red. Several passengers watch her as she bends over, hands on her knees. Finally the letters “gare du Nord” glide past through the windows. The doors open. She runs out onto the platform, up the escalator, along the corridors, spots the signs marked “Eurostar,” she knows the way, she’s on home ground, she’s been here hundreds of times, she’s about to collapse. She enters the station concourse. People, too many people, people everywhere. She threads her way, avoiding the groups that come streaming towards her, the kids lounging around on the floor. Don’t miss the train, so close. She looks up. The clock shows 8.55. Impossible, that can’t be right, she keeps going, staggers up the last steps, barely ten yards to go before customs. The platform is empty. No one, not a passenger in sight, he’s nowhere to be seen, he isn’t there, no one but the customs people in their glass cages. She goes over. As if from thin air, a woman in a blue uniform rises up in front of her. Boarding is over, Miss. She has no more breath, no more saliva, no more words. She puts out her hand, her head is spinning, her ears abuzz. You can’t go through, boarding is over. Do you hear me?
She has sat down on the ground. Her heart is threatening to pop through her chest. Everything is turmoil inside her. From emotion, exhaustion, anger, disgust. It feels as if her hair is standing on end, her body is a solid mass, racked by shudderings that keep changing its shape. She wishes she had the power to turn back the clock, to start again. Barely half an hour, a mere half-hour and she would have been all right. Where is he now? If he had stayed here, he would have waited in front of customs to tell her they weren’t leaving any more. The fact that he’s not here means he took the train. And on that train he is brooding over his resentment, while she has no way of explaining to him what really happened. He must think she changed her mind and missed the train on purpose, out of cowardice. That thought is more than she can bear; because he’s gone, she has to leave and find him. She struggles to her feet. She heads over to the Eurostar counters. She’ll take the next train. With a bit of luck, he’ll still have enough confidence in her to guess what happened and wait at the other end. She manages to get a seat on the 10:00 am Eurostar. At a fast food stand, she has a coffee and in quick succession wolfs down two warm pains au chocolat shining with grease. She is so exhausted she can hardly think ahead. Now and then a recurrent, fleeting image, always the same one, flashes through her mind, her mad dash, her feet pounding on the concrete, step after step. Most of the time, though, all the while keeping an eye on the clock, she distractedly observes two pigeons circling around each other, small automatons oscillating under the weight of their heads and tails.
After the French customs officer there is a British customs officer, a stiff and expressionless woman who compares her identity card photo against the living duplicate it represents. He came through this gate earlier, and the official probably looked at him in the same way, with that air of professional detachment. She could describe him to her and be assured that he was here before. Excuse me, I’m looking for someone, I was wondering if you saw him pass through, he took the nine o’clock train. The customs woman slowly lifts her eyes to meet hers and frowns, visibly surprised that the subject under examination possesses the power of speech. He’s tall, or at least taller than she is, a bit taller, well that’s not to say that she’s very tall, she’s average, he’s got brown hair too, not very dark but not very light either, the kind of brown that people with brownish brown hair have, his eyes match his hair, a little greener, not that he has any green in his hair but there’s something luminous about his eyes, which she associates with a hazelnut brownish sort of green, a good-looking guy basically, though perhaps not in the strictest sense of the word, it’s more that he’s to her liking, it’s hard to explain what she likes, anyway he can’t be too bad-looking, on account of Ange, who wouldn’t like a man whose looks didn’t go well with hers, he often wears a suit, but probably not today, since he’s not on a business trip, although yes, he’s meant to be on a business trip so he’s bound to be wearing one to look the part or perhaps he slipped it into his bag to feel more comfortable, but on that point she can’t say for certain. Several syllables come out of the customs officer’s mouth, coagulate into a mass of sounds that approximates a real but incomprehensible sentence. Eventually the official raises her eyes in exasperation. English. English, oh yes she’d forgotten, the English speak English, that’s only logical. She knows a few basic words of English. Let’s see, some polite phrases, the numbers up to ten, how to say her name, how to say I don’t understand. He must speak the language, that’s what matters, he’ll translate. The customs official motions for her to step aside and make way for the people behind. She joins a group of passengers moving forwards with determination then waits with them in front of a glass wall through which railway tracks and empty platforms can be seen.