Irene by Pierre Lemaitre

our wedding anniversary.”
    “I’d recommend Chez Michel,” Louis said. “It’s impeccable.”
    Camille was about to ask how much it would set him back, but his self-respect flashed a warning light and he said nothing.
    “Otherwise there’s L’Assiette.” Louis said.
    “Thanks, Louis, I’m sure Chez Michel will be perfect. Thanks again.”

8
    Irène was ready and clearly had been for quite some time. Camille restrained an urge to check his watch.
    “Don’t worry.” Irène smiled. “It’s O.K. You’re late, but within the bounds of acceptability.”
    As they headed to the car, Camille worried that Irène’s tread seemed heavier: she was waddling like a duck, her back was arched, her belly lower, everything about her seemed weary.
    “Are you alright?”
    She stopped for a moment, laid a hand on his arm and, suppressing a smile, she said, “I’m fine, Camille.”
    He thought he could sense exasperation in her tone and inthat guarded smile, as though he had already asked the question and ignored the answer. He cursed himself for not taking enough interest in her. Irritation gnawed at him. Even though he loved this woman, perhaps he was not a good husband. They walked for a while, neither of them speaking, the silence between them like some inexplicable abandonment. Words failed. As they passed a cinema, Camille fleetingly noticed the name of an actress, Gwendolyn Playne. As he opened the car door, he wondered why the name seemed familiar, but nothing came to him.
    Irène got into the car without a word and Camille asked himself how they had got into this mess. Irène must have been asking herself the same question, but she was the wiser of the two. Just as he was about to drive off, she took his hand and placed it on her thigh, high up next to her swollen belly, then laying a hand on his neck she pulled him close and kissed him long and hard. They stared at each other, surprised to have burst the bubble of silence in which they had seemed trapped.
    “I love you, Monsieur Verhœven,” Irène said.
    “And I love you, Madame Verhœven,” said Camille, studying her closely. He ran his fingers across her forehead, around her eyes, over her lips. “I love you, too.”
    Chez Michel. It was, as Louis had promised, impeccable. Utterly Parisian, with mirrors everywhere, waiters in starched black trousers and white coats, raucous as a railway station, the Muscadet ice cold. Irène was wearing a dress printed with red and yellow flowers. But although she had been careful to buy the largest size, the dress had failed to keep pace with her burgeoning pregnancy and the buttons now yawned slightly as she sat down.
    The restaurant was crowded, but the noise afforded them perfect privacy. They talked about the film Irène had had to giveup editing when she took maternity and Irène asked Camille about his father.
    The first time Irène had come to dinner, Camille’s father had taken to her as though they had known each other all their lives. At the end of the meal he gave her a present – a painting by Basquiat. Camille’s father had money. He had taken early retirement, sold his practice for an exorbitant sum – Camille did not know how much exactly, but more than enough to buy a lavish, impossibly large apartment, pay a cleaning lady he did not really need, buy more books than he had time to read, more music than he could listen to and, over the past two years, travel widely. One day he had asked Camille’s permission to sell a number of his mother’s paintings, having been pestered by gallery owners since she closed her studio.
    “She painted them for people to see,” Camille said.
    He himself had none of his mother’s paintings. The only ones he might have wished to own were the first and last.
    “Obviously, the money will all come to you eventually,” his father had said.
    “Spend it on yourself,” Camille had said, vaguely unsettled by the conversation. The subject never came up again and the paintings