Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana Rosnay (free ebook reader for iphone TXT) 📗

understand because you’re so intelligent, Clarissa. You see into people’s souls. And I really and truly thought that you wouldn’t feel hurt, because you don’t give me anything sexual anymore. Nothing much goes on in our bed, except hugs and kisses. I can’t even remember the last time we made love. When I’m with her, it is only for that. It’s just for the sex. It’s only for the sex.”

A violent fury took over, and she had to restrain herself from insulting him. She was shaking.

“Oh, really? Only for the sex?” she hissed frostily. “What about the photo albums? The videos? The celebrations? The dinners for two? All in the past year? I saw it, as it’s so nicely on display, in your home. Enough of your nonsense. Cut the crap, please. Stop saying she’s just some lay. You love her. You know it. You’re in love. And it’s intolerable. Unbearable.”

Like a little boy, he started to cry again.

“I love both of you,” he whined; “it’s a nightmare. I’m so sorry, honey. Forgive me!”

He blubbered loudly, with no holding back.

Clarissa stepped back, raised her chin.

“You’re going to get the hell out of here. Now. You’re never coming back. Is that clear? I’ll talk to a lawyer when I’m ready. That lawyer will get in touch with you. That’s all. Bye.”

She rushed away, without looking at him. The scanning system at the entrance had trouble checking her retina because of her tears. She had to go through it several times, praying François wasn’t behind her. She climbed the stairs too quickly, and had to stop halfway, breathless, her throat dry.

Mrs. Dalloway’s voice greeted her as soon as she walked in.

“Clarissa, tonight on channel Cinéma New Star, there’s a special Timothée Chalamet show. Otherwise, there’s a Chopin concert on—”

“Just shut up, Mrs. Dalloway. And don’t speak to me before tomorrow.”

Silence.

A prodigious feeling of freedom raced through her.

In the living room, the cat was curled up on the sofa, asleep. She sat down next to him and stroked his back. He purred. She put François out of her mind. She thought of all the things she had to do. The trick was to keep busy. It was the only way. In her mind, she made little notes. Check on her father to see how he was. Call Jordan to find out if the brooch was worth anything. Start thinking about the summer holiday, the first she’d spend without François. They usually spent them in Provence or Italy. Where would she go? And while she went through all these things, the idea of the book she was trying to write loomed up bigger than the rest. Luckily, the editor she worked with was not breathing down her neck. Laure-Marie knew Clarissa needed time. And Clarissa was well aware that although her books were valued, she was not a bestselling author whose new works were eagerly expected. There was no hype around her, and never had been. No one from the publishing company put pressure on her. It was always a pleasure to have lunch with Laure-Marie, who took her to nice restaurants and seemed genuinely happy to see her. But Laure-Marie had bigger and more important authors to look after.

Perhaps it was time to call Laure-Marie and tell her that she had just started working on something new. She wondered what Laure-Marie would make of the fact that Clarissa was writing in English and French simultaneously. Would she be interested? Perhaps not. Since the attacks, the world of publishing had changed. The dreadful power of the images searing around the world on social media, showing the devastation of the Piazza San Marco, bombed-out Big Ben, and the obliteration of the Sistine Chapel, seemed to have stopped time. After the Eiffel Tower had been filmed crashing down, it had not seemed possible that anything worse could ever happen. And yet it had.

But that was only the beginning. A swift and fiendish sequence of events had occurred. Pictures took precedence over words. No one read newspapers. People watched videos, over and over again, ensnared by an enthralled stupor.

Clarissa recalled that several years after the attacks, during the oddness of an unhoped-for and disquieting lull, while Europe as Clarissa had always known it started to fall apart, and as the bees endured a slow agony worsening by the day, other new and horrifying images had spread like an epidemic: Ordinary citizens, unable to stand the cruel reality of modern life, were committing suicide on social media for all to see. Individuals of all ages, all classes, all nationalities posted live videos of themselves taking their own lives, one after the other. It was beyond belief: an atrocious and despotic larger-than-life reality show caught in the frenzy of media display. Literature no longer held its own, faced now with the onslaught of immediacy, where the obscene power of video reigned supreme, never satiated. And when stunned writers had attempted to describe the attacks, those books had barely been read. People preferred to come and listen to the writer, to applaud the writer as he or she read from his or her book, and no longer purchased signed copies. Reading was no longer comforting. Reading no longer helped to heal.

So why should she go on writing? Who would read her? She would stick to writing because she didn’t have a choice, because written words were her stronghold, her defense. She would write to make her voice heard; she would continue in order to leave a trail, although she had no idea who’d ever find it. She would write.

Clarissa felt tired, more than ever. It was an effort to get out of bed, to walk up those eight flights of stairs. Why was her mouth so parched all the time? Perhaps she was overdoing things. Perhaps she needed to slow down, write less and with less passion, though that was going to be hard.

One night, as she lay asleep, the voice murmured a word, over and over again, lapping