Free After the Crash by Michel Bussi Page A

seemed to be heading into a legal
and scientific impasse that was of ever decreasing interest to anyone
except the two families involved.
The police persisted.
The journalists didn’t care.
The general public, which had been so fascinated by the case in
    the days following the ‘miracle’, quickly wearied of it as the uncertainty dragged on. The mystery seemed insoluble and everyone was
bored by the experts’ squabbling. As the furore died down, the police
attempted to work discreetly, while de Carville’s lawyers did their
best to ensure that, as far as possible, the inquiry took place outside
the public eye. It was clear that, if the case was decided purely by
senior government officials, the judgement was likely to be in their
favour. Judge Le Drian was a reasonable man, after all . . .
    The Est Républicain , which had carried the initial scoop, was the
last newspaper to continue providing a daily update on the case,
although the update became increasingly brief. The journalist who
was writing about the investigation, Lucile Moraud, had spent decades covering the sleaziest stories in eastern France; she did not miss
them. She soon found herself faced with a dilemma: what should
she call the miracle child? It was impossible to remain neutral if you
used either of the names, Emilie or Lyse-Rose, and circumlocutions
such as ‘the miracle child of Mont Terrible’ or ‘the orphan of the
snow’ or ‘the girl who lived’ tended to slow down her prose, which
she wanted to be simple and direct so she could appeal to her readership. Inspiration arrived in late January 1981. At that time, as I’m
sure you will remember, a song by Charlelie Couture was playing
constantly on the radio, a song that seemed eerily topical: ‘Like an
aeroplane without wings . . .’
    Infuriated by the slowness of the inquiry and the timidity of
Judge Le Drian, Lucile Moraud convinced her editor to run, on
29 January, a full front-page photograph of the ‘miracle child’ in
her glass cage in the pediatrics wing of the hospital. Below it ran a
caption in bold lettering, consisting of three lines from the song:
    Oh, dragonfly,
Your wings are so fragile,
As for me, my body is broken . . .
    The journalist had hit the bull’s eye. Now, no one could hear
Charlelie Couture’s hit without thinking of the miracle child with
her fragile wings. For the French people, the orphan of the snow
became ‘Dragonfly’, and the nickname stuck. Even the families
began to call her that. And so did I.
    What an ass! Dragonfly . . .
I even went so far as to become interested in the insects themselves, and spent a fortune collecting them. When I think about it
now . . . All of that, just because some shrewd journalist knew how
to manipulate the sentiments of the masses.
The police were less romantic. In order to refer to the baby without implicitly siding with either family, they invented a neutral
acronym that linked the beginning of one name to the end of the
other. By crossing Lyse-Rose with Emilie, they created Lylie . . .
Lylie.
Superintendent Vatelier was the first to use this name in front of
journalists.
And, let’s be honest, it isn’t bad. As with Dragonfly, the nickname Lylie stuck, a bit like an affectionate diminutive.
Not Lyse-Rose or Emilie, but Lylie.
A chimera. A strange being composed of two bodies. A monster.
Talking of monsters, I think it is time I told you more about Malvina de Carville.
    Léonce de Carville was a strong-willed, determined man, used to
getting what he wanted in life. However, so far none of the evidence
in this case was working in his favour, and he became frustrated,
impatient. And so it was that he made two mistakes. Two very serious mistakes.
    The first concerned his granddaughter, Malvina. She was only six
years old at the time: a lively child, and treated like a little queen.
Naturally, it was always going to be difficult for her to get over the
death of both her parents and