Adam Massé

Adam Massé is the infant son of Myriam and Paul Massé, and the small, trusting presence at the center of the family’s daily routines. His peaceful attachment to Louise gives those routines their warmth, while his death makes their domestic setting inseparable from the book’s opening violence: he is found dead among his toys, and Mila is left gravely injured.

Identity and Early Life

Adam is still a baby when Louise joins the Massé household. In the early weeks of her employment, he changes conspicuously: the child who had cried through the night begins sleeping peacefully until morning, and he learns to walk. The narrative registers his growth through ordinary bodily details—his rounded cheeks, soft thighs, and plump arms—rather than through speech or independent action. He is a young child whose world is made up of the people who hold, soothe, feed, and watch over him.

Louise’s care is intimate and physical. When Mila is at school, Louise ties Adam against her body in a long shawl, feels his thighs against her stomach, and lets his saliva dampen her neck as he falls asleep. She sings to him throughout the day, massages him, and takes pride in his rolls and rosy cheeks. In the morning he welcomes her with a babble and his arms stretched out. The repetition of this greeting makes his trust visible: before he can explain it, he turns toward the person who has become a dependable part of his day.

Family and Care

Adam’s relationship with Louise is shaped by attentive, hands-on care. Her singing and massages, and the calm rhythm she establishes around him, coincide with his improved sleep and new ability to walk. These changes make her presence valuable to the household, but they also show how much of Adam’s everyday security is entrusted to a hired caregiver. Louise’s tenderness is real in the scenes the narrative shows; it exists within an unequal employment relationship, where the care that sustains the family is also domestic labor.

Myriam’s bond with Adam is shown in a bath-time scene of unrestrained affection. She holds him between her thighs, presses him close, and covers his rounded body with kisses until he struggles and cries. Looking at him, she is overcome by maternal love and thinks that this kind of naked closeness will soon pass as he grows older. Her awareness of time gives the scene its poignancy: the beloved baby is already becoming a future adult in her imagination, even as she holds him against her in the present.

The Bite and Its Discovery

After bathing Adam, Myriam notices two unusual marks, one on his arm and another on his back near the shoulder. They are red and nearly faded, but resemble teeth marks. She kisses the injuries gently, holds him against her, asks his forgiveness, and comforts him for the distress he endured while she was away. Her response combines alarm with tenderness: the marks make an unseen moment of harm suddenly present in the intimate space of the bath.

The next morning, Myriam raises the matter with Louise as soon as the nanny arrives, before Louise has even removed her coat. Myriam holds out Adam’s bare arm and asks whether the marks are bites. Louise says she knows about them, has applied cream to help them heal, and identifies Mila as the one who bit him. She explains that the children were playing in the living room while she prepared dinner; when she heard Adam scream, she initially did not understand what had happened, because Mila had bitten him through his clothes. The account establishes both the injury and the circumstances Louise gives for learning of it, while leaving Myriam to ask whether Louise saw the bite herself.

Death and Narrative Significance

The novel’s opening discloses Adam’s death before the reader has learned the ordinary life that preceded it. The account is blunt: he dies in seconds, and a doctor says he did not suffer. His body is placed in a gray bag, the zipper drawn over it as it lies among the toys. The contrast between the familiar playthings and the body in the bag turns the children’s room into a scene of irreversible loss.

The crime scene is recorded in forensic particulars. Police photograph the apartment, collect fingerprints, and measure the bathroom and children’s bedroom. The princess rug is soaked with blood; the changing table is half overturned; the toys are taken away in transparent evidence bags and sealed. The blue dresser is also to be used at trial. Adam’s death is therefore presented both as a family catastrophe and as a scene converted into evidence, its ordinary furnishings made to testify to violence.

When Myriam enters the room and finds her children, she screams; the account describes her shock as observed and repeated by paramedics, police, and journalists. Adam is already dead, while Mila is still alive when help arrives, fighting, convulsing, and struggling to breathe. The distinction between the two children’s fates is made starkly at the outset: Adam’s life has ended, and Mila’s is slipping away. His earlier babbling welcome, the shawl around Louise’s body, and Myriam’s kisses on his wounds remain as traces of the daily intimacy that the opening catastrophe destroys.