Free The List of My Desires by Grégoire Delacourt Page A

it often looked as if it was about to fall over. So he had made two large holes in the back of the wardrobe and in the wall, which explained the plaster dust inside the wardrobe itself and on my shoes.
    Once he had fixed the wardrobe to the wall, he must have wanted to wipe the floury dust off my shoes, and that’s how he found the cheque.
    When?
    When had he found it? How long had he known?
    As long ago as when I came home from Paris and he went to meet me at the station? When he murmured in my ear that he was glad to see me back?
    Was it before Le Touquet? Had he taken me there knowing the harm he was going to do me? Did he take my hand on the beach already knowing that he was about to deceive me? And when we clinked glasses together in the hotel restaurant, and he vowed that nothing would change and it would all stay the same, did he already not give a shit? Was he preparing to make his getaway from our life?
    Or was it after that, when we came home?
    I don’t remember when it was that he worked on the wardrobe. I wasn’t there, and he hadn’t said anything. The bastard. The thief.
    Of course I called the Nestlé headquarters in Vevey.
    They didn’t know a thing about any Jocelyn Guerbette there.
    The receptionist split her sides when I persisted, telling her that he was spending all week with them, training to be a foreman in charge of a unit at their Häagen-Dazs factory in Arras, yes, yes, Arras, mademoiselle, in France, in the Pas-de-Calais, postcode 62000. He was telling you the first thing that came into his head, dear. This is the headquarters of Nestlé Worldwide, you think we train foremen or stock controllers here? Oh, come off it! Tell the police if you like, or ask yourself if he has a mistress, but believe me, madame, he’s not here. She must have realised that I was close to panic, because her voice suddenly became gentler, and before hanging up she added, I’m so sorry.
    At the factory, Jo’s boss confirmed my fears.
    He had applied for a week’s holiday and hadn’t been in for the last four days. He’s due back next Monday, I was told.
    You don’t say! You won’t be seeing Jo again. No one will see the bastard again. He’s made off with eighteen million in his pocket. The bird has flown. He’ll have scratched the final e off my first name, and the cheque was suddenly made out in his name. Jocelyne minus her e . Jocelyn Guerbette. Four days will have given him enough time to get to the furthest reaches of Brazil. Canada. Africa. Switzerland, maybe. Eighteen million euros put a lot of distance between you and what you’re leaving behind.
    A hell of a lot of distance. A distance that can’t be crossed.
    The memory of our kiss five days ago. I knew it. It was a last kiss. Women always have presentiments about such things. It’s our gift. But I hadn’t listened to myself. I’d been playing with fire. I’d wanted to think that Jo and I would last forever. I’d let his tongue caress mine so incredibly gently, without daring to let my fear speak that evening.
    I’d thought that after surviving the unbearable sadness of our little daughter’s death, after the bad beers, the insults, the ferocity and the wounds it left, the brutal, animal sex, we had become inseparable, united, friends.
    That was why the money had frightened me.
    That was why I’d kept the astonishing win quiet. Why I’d controlled my hysteria. That was why, at heart, I hadn’t wanted it. I’d thought that if I gave him his Cayenne he’d go off in it, drive a long way away, fast, never come back. Making other people’s dreams come true means that you risk destroying them. He had to buy his car himself. For the sake of his pride. His wretched masculine pride.
    I was right. I’d had a foreboding that the money would threaten us both. That it was fire. Incandescent chaos.
    I knew in my bones that while it could do good, the money could also do harm.
    Daisy Duck was right. Greed burns everything in its path.
    I thought my