AllFreeNovel
Share Us
GILBERT
NINE HOURS BEFORE – PARIS, 1987
Monsieur Géroux watched as the sun rose outside his bedroom window. Time to get up, he thought with relief. He hauled himself up, and everything in his body began to ache. He groaned, then took a sip of water from the glass on his nightstand.
He’d spent most of the night thinking about the past. When he’d left Sabine at the restaurant, he’d been pleasantly numbed by the cheap wine. But by the time he’d got in his bed, his thoughts had begun to race; when he did fall asleep his dreams were all of the same thing. He was back in the kitchen at Luberon, and he kept seeing the order slips above the waiter station. At first there were dozens. He went to reach for them, and they melted into nothing, until only one was present. He stretched on his tiptoes, but the slip started to float up and up, towards the ceiling, growing smaller and smaller and further and further away.
He woke up with a start, then turned over, only to be back at the beginning in the same dream. This time the kitchen was covered in slips. Everywhere. On the counter, in the bubbling pot. When he turned to look at the pot, which was hissing and spitting, he opened the lid, and inside was a ticking bomb.
He yelped, then dropped the lid. One of the slips flew up into his face, and he picked it up, and saw that it said, Danger!
The others said the same thing. Everywhere he looked it said the same thing.
He rushed to the pot, but it was too late – before it exploded he woke up in a cold sweat, his heart thundering in his ears.
He lay in bed panting for ages. It took forever for his breathing to calm down. Eventually he switched on the light, and started working on a crossword puzzle to steady his nerves.
Early on, he’d found that crosswords were one of the few things that helped to distract his thoughts. His brain was still foggy from the wine and lack of sleep, but when he was finished an hour later, he was able to fall into a dreamless sleep – for an hour or two, only to be awakened just before dawn by Tapis’s bladder; the dog insisted on being put out right then. When they returned from the street corner, he huddled in bed for warmth and the vague but hopeful wish that he might still get some more sleep but it was hopeless.
Coffee, he thought, then padded his way into the kitchen, feeling like he’d aged in the night.
He felt calmer now, though, but still puzzled by those dreams. Was it just the shock of seeing that order slip? he wondered. This tiny little reminder of life before everything changed.
He didn’t know.
While the coffee simmered on the stove, he found his glasses on the small table in the kitchen where he’d left them the day before. He got up then went to search his jacket pocket for the little slip, coming back into the kitchen with its fluorescent light. He poured his coffee, then sat down and stared at the order slip.
He saw what looked like a smudge on the first line. He rubbed it, but it didn’t budge, so he got up to fetch a cotton bud from the bathroom – one of the tricks of his trade to remove stains and other such material from old books – and he lightly dabbed at the first line until very faintly he could make out the pen beneath. It was a date.
4th January 1943
The days are short, but hours can seem long, H. She needs to spend these last ones with her boys. That’s an order.
M.
His heart started to pound. The fourth of January 1943. It was the day before the murders. The day before his beloved, naughty little brother was poisoned.
