Louise and Mila

Louise and Mila share a close but profoundly unequal relationship that changes from playful attachment into a mixture of dependence, secrecy, and fear. Louise gives Mila attentive care and imaginative company, yet the games she controls can make the child believe she has been abandoned, and her protectiveness can become physically coercive. Their bond illuminates the unstable boundary between care and possession: Mila seeks Louise’s comfort, but cannot determine the terms on which it is given.

First Bond and Everyday Care

When Louise first meets the family, Mila has just woken from her nap and is hiding beside Paul. Louise takes Adam from his father and pretends not to see the girl, instead searching for a vanished princess. Mila laughs, and the game gives the child a way to approach the new nanny on her own terms. Myriam later presents the encounter as evidence that Mila chose Louise, a version of their beginning that makes the attachment seem immediate and mutual.

Louise’s care soon becomes part of the family’s daily structure. She follows Myriam’s instructions about the apartment and Paul’s records, and she teaches Mila to put things away; the child learns to hang her coat on its hook. When Myriam comes home late, Louise has prepared dinner and the children are calm and dressed. Myriam’s reliance on Louise grows as she hands over more tasks, while Mila no longer asks when her mother will return. The relationship therefore forms within an arrangement in which Louise’s paid work also supplies the steadiness and attention that the parents’ schedules leave scarce.

Louise’s care is meticulous, but it does not simply mean doing what the children need. She records their appointments, routines, medicines, and even the exact words of Mila’s teacher in her flower-covered notebook. She also takes on work beyond what Myriam asks: when Myriam tries to take a saucepan from her one evening, Louise gently pushes her back and insists that she should rest and enjoy her children. The tenderness is real, but the scene shows how readily Louise occupies the role of caretaker and how difficult it becomes for Myriam to reclaim tasks Louise has made her own.

Play, Attachment, and Fear

Louise invents elaborate games for Mila, including police and robber, complete with costumes, settings, and precise imaginary geography. She wants Mila to remember the rules and continue the stories; when the child tires of them, Louise urges her to begin again. The play offers companionship, but its intensity also reflects Louise’s desire to hold the child’s attention on terms she has devised.

Her favorite game is hide-and-seek without counting or rules. Louise disappears without warning, chooses places where she can watch the children, and stays hidden even when their calls turn to crying. Adam sobs and Mila becomes frightened that Louise has truly gone, leaving them alone in the apartment. Louise waits in her hiding place, observing their distress without emerging. Mila gradually learns to search cupboards, lift curtains, and look under the bed, but Louise finds new hiding places, from the laundry basket to the shower cubicle. The reversal is stark: a game that might teach a child confidence instead makes abandonment feel real, while the adult who controls the game watches the fear she has created.

Their attachment is also built through small, ordinary forms of attention. Louise sits beside Mila while she draws, silently watching a densely filled picture of an orange house, oversized flowers, and long-limbed figures. When asked who one huge smiling figure is, Mila identifies it as herself. Louise values being present for the child’s discoveries and especially cherishes Adam’s habit of turning to her as if to share his progress. Yet Mila’s drawings and the children’s changing attention also mark a limit: they have their own imaginative world, and Louise cannot command all of it.

A Shared Secret and Its Unequal Terms

The imbalance becomes more visible when Mila briefly gets away from Louise. After an unknown older woman intervenes, Mila rejects the stranger and runs back to the nanny. Louise comforts and kisses her, but then tightens her arms until Mila says she is being suffocated. In a calm, cold voice, Louise warns that if Mila wanders off again, a bad man could take her, hide her, and keep her from her parents; she tells the child that nobody would come even if she cried. Mila bites Louise’s shoulder hard enough to draw blood.

Neither tells Myriam what happened. Mila remains silent without Louise having to threaten her, and their silence gives them a grievance each against the other. The secrecy may look like a private bond, but it does not make them equals: Louise has frightened Mila and used the threat of abduction to command her, while Mila’s bite is a child’s forceful resistance. Their closeness now carries concealed fear alongside affection, and the adults who might have understood or addressed the episode are excluded from it.

The Attempt to Arrange the Family

Louise’s investment in Mila extends beyond the child’s immediate needs. In bed beside Hervé, she imagines a new baby who would move between her arms and those of Myriam and Paul, binding them together and restoring tenderness to the household. The imagined child would give Louise a continuing place in a family whose routines are changing. She carefully makes the parents’ bed the next morning, searches the sheets for signs that a baby is coming, and asks Mila whether she would like a little brother or sister. She hopes Mila will carry the idea to her mother.

The child does ask Myriam whether she is pregnant, but Myriam laughs and rejects the prospect. Louise interprets the answer as concealment rather than refusal, convinced that Myriam is merely tempting fate. Her reading turns Mila into an intermediary in a hope the child did not originate and cannot fulfill. Louise’s tenderness toward her is real, but it is increasingly entangled with the adult’s need for a baby and for a secure place in the family.

That need shapes Louise’s plan to give Myriam and Paul an evening together. She offers to take the children to a restaurant so the couple can dine in peace. Myriam hesitates, but Mila asks to go with Louise, helping secure her mother’s agreement. Louise insists on paying, using the money she has brought for the outing. She chooses a nearly empty, inexpensive bistro, where Mila finds none of the lively, romantic scene she had imagined. Louise orders sausages and fries for the children without waiting for Mila to choose, while the girl barely touches her food.

After dinner, Louise walks with Mila through increasingly dark streets near the Grands Boulevards, past theatres and crowded cafés and into unfamiliar lanes. Mila grows anxious, unsure whether her parents know where she is, while Louise presses her to keep moving. She eventually buys Mila strawberry ice cream, then tells her that no ticket is needed for the night bus. The sequence mixes treats and familiar rituals with a journey the child cannot understand or control. Louise’s attempt to make space for the parents’ intimacy has taken Mila far from home, even as the child remains dependent on her for reassurance and direction.

Change and Narrative Significance

When they return, Mila runs to Paul, who is resting on the sofa and tells her that Myriam has gone to bed. Louise realizes that the outing has not brought about the reunion she hoped for: she is cold, her legs hurt, she has spent her last bill, and Myriam did not wait up. The children cannot answer the adult loneliness that has driven her plan. Mila has her own attention and desires; Louise’s investment cannot make her the keeper of the family’s happiness.

The stories Louise tells also begin to fail. Her mythical creatures lose their purpose, and her tales become disordered wanderings of impoverished princesses and sick dragons. Mila asks her to find something else, but Louise cannot. She laughs less and puts less energy into games, even while continuing to observe the children and treasure their occasional appeals for her help. Their relationship retains moments of genuine tenderness, but Louise’s capacity to give it has thinned.

That deterioration becomes dangerous. Louise leaves the television on despite Myriam’s prohibition, and Mila knows not to repeat the words she hears in the news around her parents. As the children grow restless indoors, their repeated questions, demands for songs, and calls to play become unbearable to Louise. She imagines putting her hands around Adam’s neck and shaking him, then pushes the thought away; the narration describes a dark, engulfing mood that has taken hold of her. This is not proof that Mila causes Louise’s collapse. Rather, the child’s ordinary dependence and appetite for repetition expose the pressure under which Louise’s care has been performed, and the harm that follows when tenderness can no longer be sustained.

The novel ultimately makes Louise and Mila’s closeness both intimate and precarious. Louise can be the person Mila runs toward after becoming lost and the person whose embrace becomes too tight; she can soothe the child, frighten her, and keep a consequential episode secret from her parents. Mila’s dependence is genuine, but it does not erase her fear or resistance. Through their changing bond, care appears not as a guarantee of safety but as a relationship shaped by unequal power, limited choices, and needs that the child cannot be expected to satisfy.