Free The List of My Desires by Grégoire Delacourt Page B

love was a rampart. A dam that nothing could breach. I hadn’t dared to imagine that Jo, my Jo, would rob me. Deceive me. Abandon me.
    That he would destroy my life.

F or, in the end, what was my life?
    A happy childhood – until the middle of my seventeenth year, until Maman cried out in the street, and then a year later came Papa’s stroke and his childlike wonder all over again every six minutes.
    Hundreds of drawings and paintings recording those wonderful days: the long drive in the Citroën DS to the châteaux of the Loire, Chambord where I fell into the water and Papa and some other men jumped in to save me. More drawings: self-portraits of Maman in which she looks pretty, no suffering ever seems to show in her eyes. And a painting of the big house where I was born in Valenciennes, but I don’t remember it myself.
    My schooldays, simple and sweet. Even Fabien Derôme’s non-kiss was a blessing, really. It taught me that ugly girls dream of handsome men, but all the pretty girls in the world stand between them and what they want, like so many peaks that can’t be scaled. So from then on I had tried to see beauty where it might be hidden: in kindness, honesty, delicacy, and that was Jo. Jo and his forceful tenderness; he won my heart, married my body and made me his wife. I was always faithful to Jo, even in days of torment, on tempestuous nights. I loved him in spite of himself, in spite of the malice that disfigured his face and made him say such terrible things when Nadège died on the point of being born; as if, putting her nose out, she had sniffed the air, tasted the world and decided that she didn’t like it.
    My two live children and our little angel were my joy and my sorrow; I still tremble for Romain, but I know that on the day he is hurt and there’s no one else to tend his wounds, he’ll come back here. To my arms.
    I loved my life. I loved the life that Jo and I had made. I loved the way that ordinary things became beautiful in our eyes. I loved our simple, comfortable, friendly house. I loved our garden, our modest little vegetable plot, the pathetic tomatoes on the vine it gave us. I loved hoeing the frozen ground with my husband. I loved our dreams of next spring. I was waiting with all the enthusiasm of a young mother to be a grandmother some day; I tried my hand at lavish cakes, gourmet pancakes, rich chocolate desserts. I wanted to have the scents of my own childhood in our house, with different photographs on the wall.
    One day I was planning to convert a ground-floor room for Papa, I would have looked after him, and every six minutes I’d have invented a new life for him.
    I loved my thousands of Isoldes who read tengoldfingers . I loved their kindness, calm and powerful like a river flowing along, a regenerating force like a mother’s love. I loved that community of women, our vulnerabilities, our strengths.
    I loved my life deeply, but the moment that I won the lottery I knew that the money would wreck it all, and for what?
    For a bigger vegetable plot? Larger, redder tomatoes? A new variety of tangerine? A larger, more luxurious house; a whirlpool bath? A Porsche Cayenne? A round-the-world cruise? A gold watch, diamonds? Enhanced breasts? A nose job? No, no and no again. I already had what money can’t buy but can only destroy.
    Happiness.
    My happiness, anyway. Mine. With all its flaws, its banalities, its petty drawbacks. But mine.
    A huge, flaming, unique happiness.
    So I had made my decision a few days after coming back from Paris with the cheque: I had decided to burn the money.
    But the man that I loved stole it.

I didn’t say anything to anyone.
    When the twins asked me about Jo, I said that he had stayed on in Switzerland for a few more days, at Nestlé’s request.
    Nadine was still sending me her news. She had a boyfriend, a tall redhead, a 3D film animator who was working on the next Wallace and Gromit. She was gently falling in love, my little girl; she didn’t want to