Free Consolation by Anna Gavalda

intelligence.’
    I could hear her dimples.
    ‘Right, I’ll hang up now,’ she concluded, ‘but you too, Charles, you’ve got to look after yourself . . .’
    ‘Oh, I’ll –’ I waved myself away, wearily.
    ‘Yes, you. You never say a thing. You never confide in anyone and you go off hunting bulldozers as if you were Prince Andrei . . .’
    ‘Nicely put.’
    ‘Bah. It’s my job, may I remind you. Right, good night.’
    ‘Wait, one last thing.’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘I’m not really sure I like being your best girlfriend, but hey, let’s just suppose I am. So I’m going to speak to you like the best of best girlfriends, okay?’
    She didn’t reply.
    ‘Leave him, Claire. Leave that man.’
    Silence.
    ‘You’re too old for this. It’s not Alexis. This isn’t the past. It’s that man. He’s the one who’s hurting you. One day, I remember, we were talking about your work and you said, “It’s impossible to be just, because justice doesn’t exist. But injustice, on the other hand, does exist. Injustice is easy to fight because it stares you in the face and everything becomes crystal clear.” And, well, we’ve reached that point. I don’t give a fuck about that bloke, about who he is or what he’s worth, but what I do know is that
per se
, this is an
unjust
thing in your life. Throw him on the dump.’
    Still nothing.
    ‘Are you there?’
    ‘You’re right. I’m going to go on a diet and then stop smoking, and after that I’ll get rid of him.’
    ‘Now you’re talking.’
    ‘Easy-peasy.’
    ‘Right, go to bed and dream about a nice boy . . .’
    ‘Who’ll have a gorgeous SUV,’ she sighed.
    ‘Humungous!’
    ‘And a flat screen.’
    ‘Well, obviously. Right. Hugs and kisses.’
    ‘Same . . . (sniff ) here.’
    ‘Christ, you’re a pain. I can hear you, you’re still crying.’
    ‘Yes, but I’m okay now,’ she sniffled, ‘really I am. It’s a good big fat cry and it’s all because of you, you worm.’
    And she hung up again.
    He grabbed a cushion and wrapped himself in his jacket.
    End of this week’s
Play for Today
.
    *
    If Charles Balanda – one metre eighty, seventy-eight kilos, barefoot, baggy trousers and belt undone, his arms crossed over his chest and his nose stuffed into that old blue cushion – had finally fallen asleep, the story would have ended there.
    He was our hero. He would have turned forty-seven, a few months from then, and he’d had a life, but not much of one. Not much at all . . . He wasn’t very good at it. He must have been telling himself that the best was behind him, and he didn’t dwell on the matter. The best, you said? Best of what? And for whom . . . No, never mind, he was too tired. The words were missing, for him and for me. His case was too heavy, and I didn’t really feel like carrying it for him. I understood him.
    I understood him.
    But.
    There was something she had said . . . Something which kept creeping up on him, to squeeze a sponge soaked in water onto his face, when in fact he was half dead over in his corner.
    Dead and already defeated.
    Defeated and totally indifferent. The prize too paltry, his gloves too tight, life too predictable.
    ‘Three months from now.’
    That was what she said, wasn’t it?
    Those four words seemed more terrible than all the rest. So, she had been keeping track from the beginning? From the first day of the end of her last period? No . . . It wasn’t possible.
    And all these ellipses, this pitiful mental calculating, all the weeks and months and years living at a low ebb obliged him to look back.
    He was suffocating, in any case.
    His eyes are open wide. Because she said, three months from now, he thinks, okay, that means April . . . And the machine starts up again and he too is counting the gap on his fingers.
    That makes July, that makes September since it had already been two months. Yes, that’s it, he remembers now . . .
    End of summer. He had just finished his internship at Valmer’s and was getting