Clémence

Clémence is Stéphanie’s closest confidante and a consequential presence in Anthony’s encounters with her. Protective in public and radically open in private, she helps Stéphanie weather romantic uncertainty while negotiating her own sexual relationships, academic setbacks, and growing independence. Their friendship is not a quiet backdrop: it is the place where secrets become shared knowledge, humiliations are answered, and each can expect the other to show up.

Identity and Introduction

Clémence first enters Anthony’s view with Stéphanie, greeting him while he is alone at a party and asking whether he has seen Alex. Anthony is already drunk; after he accepts a vial of drugs from another young man, Clémence tells Simon to leave him alone. She is present when Anthony later regains his senses outside, lying on a staircase with wet hair as his cousin tries to get him to drink water. This moment establishes her as alert to his vulnerability, even as she remains part of the same social world that has made him feel out of place and eager to impress.

Clémence also becomes part of Anthony’s brief, awkward proximity to Stéphanie. When she and Stéphanie arrive at his cousin’s bedroom, she kisses the cousin lightly on the lips, surprising Anthony. Later, the two girls leave together on a scooter; Clémence waves, while Stéphanie does not. At another gathering, Clémence and Stéphanie dance side by side, copying each other’s moves with their arms raised. Clémence steps away after they whisper together, leaving Anthony an opening to speak to Stéphanie; she returns carrying two tumblers of beer. Her comings and goings repeatedly shape the space around Stéphanie and Anthony without making her merely a chaperone: she has her own attachments and purposes.

Friendship and Loyalty

The friendship between Clémence and Stéphanie is sustained by habit as much as by declarations. When they are apart, they spend much of their time on the telephone, despite Stéphanie’s mother’s complaints about the bills. Clémence listens as Stéphanie revisits her encounters with Simon in minute detail, turning over every gesture and inflection. On one occasion she lets the monologue run for nearly forty-five minutes before saying she will pick Stéphanie up around three, as usual. The patience is practical and intimate: Clémence does not need to resolve Stéphanie’s feelings in order to stay beside her.

That loyalty becomes visible at the skate park when Romain makes an unwanted advance toward Stéphanie and tries to put a hand on her back. Stéphanie tells him to stop; Clémence intervenes when his response turns hostile. She has history with Romain, having gone out with him in seventh grade, and that earlier relationship gives her some leverage. She can put him in his place when she acts quickly, though this time her sharp rebuke goes too far and he retreats to the far end of the ramp. Clémence’s intervention does not erase the tension or make the group safe, but it gives Stéphanie an ally in a moment when Romain’s anger threatens to overwhelm her refusal.

Their closeness also depends on an unusually frank exchange of bodily and sexual knowledge. They share childhood memories, long telephone conversations, and tubs of coconut ice cream while watching Dirty Dancing; each is certain the other will be there when needed. Since adolescence they have debriefed dates, discussed intimate bodily functions, and traded advice about avoiding infections. Their talk extends beyond practical care into the close inspection of their own bodies and the men they meet. The book presents this candor as a form of mutual support, but not as uncomplicated confidence: the girls scrutinize themselves as closely as they scrutinize anyone else, comparing their bodies with each other and with magazine images.

Desire, Secrets, and Conflict

Clémence’s romantic life is less settled than the security of her friendship. She wants to see Anthony’s cousin again partly because he is attractive and partly because he is the only person in town with hash. She has already visited his place and arranged to meet him near the Decommissioned Power Plant; they have met a couple of times, though he has not yet dared to make a move. Clémence anticipates what might happen. When Stéphanie jokes about the cousin’s home and his mother, Clémence does not pursue the subject, keeping her own interest to herself.

That secrecy becomes difficult to maintain. At the skate park, Romain alludes to Clémence’s involvement with social misfits. She realizes from the others’ lack of reaction that the affair is probably common knowledge. Stung by the exposure, she tells herself she will end it soon, but only after getting what she wants. The episode captures her unwillingness to let public judgment dictate desire, alongside her awareness that the group has already turned private conduct into gossip.

A later confession brings a different secret into the open: Clémence has been sleeping with Simon. Stéphanie had suspected that something was happening because Clémence blushed when asked where she had been. She responds first with an insult, but curiosity quickly overtakes anger. The two friends begin comparing experiences, and the confession restores a sense of equality between them. The revelation could have hardened into betrayal; instead, their shared appetite for unvarnished talk gives them a way back toward one another. Their friendship does not depend on innocence or on having made the same choices. It depends on being able to tell the truth and continue talking.

Studies and Independence

Clémence’s path away from home has involved real difficulty. After a failed attempt at the préparatoire in Lille, she switched to medical school in Nancy and has completed her first year. She describes the beginning as a bleak stretch: arriving after the course was underway, she found herself among 1,600 students facing a cutoff, professors’ contempt, punishing workloads, and intense competition. Until March, the days felt like a gray tunnel, and she ended up on Prozac. Later, she finds a rhythm and forms a supportive, hardworking group with Capucine, Marc, Blanche, Édouard, and Nassim. They study in the library, party, and build connections; she plans to camp with them in the Cévennes for two weeks in August. Her account gives her ambition a social dimension: progress comes not through solitary will alone, but through finding people with whom the work and its pressures can be shared.

When she is in town, Clémence drives her parents’ white Peugeot 106, a dented but sturdy utility car insured only for liability. Her father sometimes uses it for hunting; otherwise it sits in the garage, and its seats smell of mildew. The modest car contrasts with Stéphanie’s careful preparation for a date and her acceptance to ESSEC. Stéphanie tells Clémence about passing the entrance competition without smiling or appearing excited, though the admission represents a launch pad. Clémence responds with enthusiasm, and the two continue together in the old Peugeot. Their different circumstances do not prevent companionship, but the contrast makes visible the distinct routes each is taking toward adulthood.

Narrative Role and Significance

Clémence’s role is to make friendship an active, sustaining relation rather than a sentimental label. She intervenes when Stéphanie is pressured, listens through the repeated analysis of Simon, and receives the confession that could have fractured their bond. At the same time, she is not simply Stéphanie’s helper: her affair with Anthony’s cousin, her involvement with Simon, her difficult first year in Nancy, and her new circle of friends give her a separate trajectory. Her willingness to pursue desire coexists with loyalty and with a sharp awareness of how quickly other people turn private choices into public knowledge.

The friendship’s most revealing movement is from secrecy and unequal knowledge toward confession and restored candor. Clémence and Stéphanie can insult each other, compare experiences, and resume the closeness built through years of ordinary contact. That intimacy offers neither perfect protection nor a way out of every social pressure; it does offer a dependable witness. In the novel’s crowded world of adolescent desire and judgment, Clémence matters because she helps make honesty between friends possible without requiring either girl to be blameless.