Free The List of My Desires by Grégoire Delacourt

only child. I grew up waiting for you and watching Maman draw the world. I grew up with the fear of not being pretty in your eyes, not lovely like Maman and brilliant like you. I dreamed of designing and creating dresses to make all women pretty. I dreamed of Solal, of a white knight, I dreamed of a perfect love story; I dreamed of innocence, of paradises lost, of lagoons; I dreamed that I had wings; I dreamed of being loved for myself without having to be kind and nice.
    Who are you?
    I’m the cleaning lady, monsieur. I’ve come to see if everything’s all right in your room. I’ve come to clean your bathroom, the same as every day, empty the rubbish bin, put in a new plastic bag and clean up after you.
    Thank you, mademoiselle, how charming you are.

A t home, I reread the list of what I need, and it strikes me that wealth means being able to buy everything on it all at once, from the potato peeler to the flat-screen TV, by way of the coat from Caroll’s and the non-slip mat for the bath. Go home with everything on the list, destroy the list and tell myself: Right, there we are, there’s nothing else I need. All I have left from now on are wishes. Only wishes.
    But that never happens.
    Because our needs are our little daily dreams. The little things to be done that project us into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the future; trivial things that we plan to buy next week, allowing us to think that next week we’ll still be alive.
    It’s the need for a non-slip bath mat that keeps us going. Or for a couscous steamer. A potato peeler. So we stagger our purchases. We programme the places where we’ll go for them. Sometimes we draw comparisons. A Calor iron versus a Rowenta iron. We fill our cupboards slowly, our drawers one by one. You can spend your life filling a house, and when it’s full you break things so that you can replace them and have something to do the next day. You can even go so far as to break up a relationship in order to project yourself into another story, another future, another house.
    Another life to fill.
    I went into Brunet’s bookshop in the Rue Gambetta and bought Belle du Seigneur in the Folio edition. I’m taking advantage of the evenings while Jo is away to reread it. But this time it’s terrifying because now I know what happens. Ariane Deume takes a bath, soliloquises, gets ready, and I already know how the story will end in Geneva. I know about the dreadful triumph of boredom over desire, flushing passion away, but I still can’t help believing in it. Weariness carries me off into the heart of the night. I wake up exhausted, dreamy, in love.
    Until this morning.
    When everything falls apart.

I didn’t scream.
    Didn’t cry. Didn’t lash out at the walls. Or tear my hair. Or break everything within reach. I didn’t pass out. I didn’t even feel my heart racing or a dizziness creeping over me.
    All the same, I stayed sitting on the bed, just in case.
    I looked around me. At our bedroom.
    The little gilt frames with photos of the children at all ages. Our wedding photograph on Jo’s bedside table. A portrait of me by Maman on my side of the bed; she painted it in a few seconds, starting with a violet swirl and using the blue watercolour she had left on her brush. That’s you reading, she said.
    My heart stayed steady. My hands didn’t shake.
    I bent down to pick up the blouse that I’d dropped on the floor. I put it on the bed beside me, and my fingers creased it before letting it fall. I’d iron it again in a moment. I ought to have listened to my inner prompting to buy the Calor steam turbo iron that I saw in Auchan at three hundred and ninety-nine euros, number twenty-seven on the list of things I need.
    That was when I began to laugh. Laughing at myself.
    I’d known it.

T he plaster dust on the heel of my shoe confirmed it even before I looked.
    Jo had repaired the hanging rail in the wardrobe, but more importantly, he had fixed the wardrobe itself to the wall, because