Free The Islanders by Pascal Garnier Page B

laugh.
    ‘Is that your wife?’
    He nodded.
    ‘Let’s go. On three.’
    Rodolphe was waiting for them on the landing, warmly wrapped up and with a ridiculous red woolly hat on his head.
    ‘Are you coming with us?’
    ‘Of course! Who wouldn’t trust a blind person?’
    The telephone was still ringing when they reached the floor below.

The Islanders
    The pushchair was rattling along the dusty path, the front right wheel squeaking as it turned. It was Jeanne pushing it, humming a tune that made little Luc laugh. Olivier was walking ahead carrying a rucksack. Inside there was enough baby food, milk and nappies to last several days. Tucked in his breast pocket, the ransom letter was burning against his chest like a poultice. His parents had gone away for a few days to stay with friends in the country. He had had to fight hard to be allowed to stay behind. He was sixteen, almost seventeen, and perfectly capable of being left home alone. He clinched it with a promise to call them every day.
    Later, when Jeanne left him alone with Luc in the cabin, the die would be cast. She would return with the empty pushchair, telling them she had nodded off and woken to find him gone. The following day, the parents would receive the anonymous letter. She would come back to the cabin once a day while he went off to call his parents, until he picked up the money. At that point they would leave Luc at an agreed location and disappear, never to be seen again. It was the price they had to pay to reach the island. It was hot, as hot then as it was bitterly cold tonight.
    Every detail of that day came back to Olivier as he waded up to his ankles through crisp snow. He could not see Jeanne but heard her breathing behind him. The woods became denser the further in they went. The branches snatched at their clothes and scratched their cheeks and hands. They fell over several times. Breathless, they came to a halt beside a place where the earth dipped into a kind of ditch.
    ‘Here?’
    ‘Yes, we’ve come far enough.’
    They cut the ropes securing the rug and rolled the body into the bottom of the hole before covering it in twigs, dry leaves, and snow. It was falling again now. The heavens were smiling on them; tomorrow there would be no trace of their steps. They gathered up the ropes and rug and went back the way they had come. They took a couple of wrong turns but eventually made it back to the car in which Rodolphe was waiting for them, frozen rigid.
    ‘You took your time!’
    On the contrary, to Jeanne and Olivier it all seemed to have happened in the space of five minutes. Jeanne started the car and moved off slowly. The snowflakes were soundlessly pelting the windscreen, swept away immediately by the wipers. Olivier remembered that when he was little, he always used to volunteer to wipe the blackboard at school. He loved it. He was reliving that pleasure tonight. Everything was clean and tidy, the satisfaction of a job done. All mistakes had been erased, they could start anew.
    Back at home, Rodolphe had to face facts: he was the third wheel. The other two were united in silence, forcing him to retreat into himself. His quips, bad puns and snide remarks were like water off a duck’s back. He swiped the remaining Scotch before Olivier had a chance to pour himself a glass, and went and shut himself in his room. It was a petty thing to do, and made him feel no better. In fact, far from having the desired effect of knocking him out, the alcohol wound him up even further. He could not sleep. He tossed and turned under the duvet like a boar in its wallow. Too hot, too cold. They were bound to have sex. No doubt about it, the bastard was going to fuck his sister. He, whose knowledge ofsex was limited to the subtle pleasures of the occasional quickie with a whore or, more frequently, with his right hand, refused to think of Jeanne with her legs open, pussy on offer, breasts full. Little by little, the imagined sensations of soft skin, moist hair