Myriam Returns to Legal Practice and Hires Louise

Myriam Returns to Legal Practice and Hires Louise marks the point at which Myriam’s stalled legal career resumes and Louise enters the Massé family’s daily life. The decision offers Myriam a way out of a domestic confinement she can no longer bear, but it also begins an intimate employment relationship whose comforts and unequal obligations become increasingly difficult to separate.

The Return to Work

After an encounter with Pascal leaves Myriam feeling exposed and defeated, a text from him the next morning changes the prospect before her: he asks whether she is considering returning to law and proposes they discuss it. Myriam, who had imagined Pascal mocking her diminished circumstances, is overcome with joy. She jumps around the apartment and kisses Mila. The message does not erase her uncertainty about how Pascal sees her, but it makes legal practice imaginable again.

Paul’s response is not the enthusiasm Myriam hopes for. He says he had not known that she wanted to work, then questions how they will manage the children. Their argument turns her ambition into a practical problem and leaves her feeling more confined in the apartment. Once they calm down, they consider the available arrangements. It is already late January, too late to expect a place in a crèche or daycare, and they have no useful contacts at the local council. Their income would put them in an awkward position: too high for emergency assistance, yet too low for a nanny not to be a sacrifice. They choose to hire one. Paul points out that, with overtime included, the nanny’s pay will be roughly what Myriam earns. His reluctant qualification that the work might fulfil her leaves her with bitterness rather than uncomplicated support.

Hiring and Choosing a Nanny

The recruitment begins in a climate of practical calculation and social prejudice. Paul prepares a list of interview questions and allots thirty minutes to each candidate. His requirements exclude undocumented applicants and women who are too old, veiled, or smokers; he says a child’s caregiver must be able to call the police or go to a hospital without fear. A few days earlier, Emma had advised Myriam to avoid candidates with children living nearby, because they might not stay late or babysit. Myriam is troubled by the discrimination in that advice, recognizing that she and her friends would protest if an employer spoke of them in the same way. She does not challenge Paul, whom she regards as pragmatic and inclined to put family and career first.

The couple prepares their apartment for the interviews. After a family trip to the market, they buy flowers, clear books and magazines from the floor and even the bathroom, put away the children’s toys, fold their clothes, change the bedsheets, and try to air the cramped rooms. They want the applicants to see them as serious, orderly people who offer their children the best. Their efforts also underline the power imbalance: they are preparing to present themselves as employers, not merely as parents looking for help.

Louise arrives after several candidates have been interviewed. Myriam later describes the encounter as immediate recognition, especially because Mila appears to choose Louise. When Adam cries, Paul goes to fetch him, with Mila hiding close behind her father. Louise gently takes the baby and, rather than pressing Mila to approach, pretends she has seen a princess who has vanished. She searches around the room until Mila laughs and joins the game. The scene gives the parents a glimpse of Louise’s ability to draw a child in without force.

In the interview, Louise says that her husband is dead, that her daughter, Stéphanie, is nearly twenty, and that she is highly available. She provides references, with the Rouvier family at the top of the list, and explains that she worked for them for a long time caring for their two boys. Paul and Myriam are struck by her composed manner and frank smile. When they call the Rouviers that evening, the woman who answers initially sounds cool, then warmly recommends Louise as a second mother to her sons. The former employer says that parting from her was heartbreaking and that she had even considered having a third child to keep her. The reference turns Louise’s childcare experience into a promise of extraordinary devotion.

A Household Transformed

From the first day, the employers set terms. Myriam explains the appliances and warns Louise about objects and clothes she values; Paul’s vinyl records are off limits to the children. Louise listens without much speech, observing the apartment with the composure of someone surveying a territory. In the weeks that follow, her work goes far beyond the immediate task of watching the children. She repairs buttons, hems skirts and trousers, mends clothes Myriam was ready to discard, washes curtains yellowed by tobacco and dust, and changes the bedsheets once a week. The cluttered apartment becomes, in Myriam’s eyes, a precise and orderly bourgeois interior.

The change is felt as well as seen. Paul and Myriam sleep in fresh sheets and marvel at their new life; though Louise’s wages weigh on the household budget, Paul no longer complains. She prepares dinner, and the children are calm and tidy when Myriam returns. Mila learns to put things away and hangs her coat on its peg, a small domestic accomplishment that astonishes her parents. Louise also keeps a flower-covered notebook containing the children’s schedules, school outings, pediatric appointments, medicines, the price of an ice cream, and a teacher’s exact words. Her attentiveness is meticulous, extending from the family’s practical needs to a written record of its routines.

Myriam calls Louise a fairy, crediting her with making a cramped, airless apartment feel bright and peaceful. The image expresses genuine relief, but it also casts ordinary labor as magic. Repairs, cleaning, planning, and childcare appear to happen effortlessly, while the person performing them becomes harder to see as a worker with limits and needs. The family’s feeling that Louise is indispensable grows alongside their reliance on the domestic order she creates.

Care, Dependence, and Boundaries

As Myriam’s work makes her late, Louise increasingly absorbs tasks that the couple has not explicitly assigned. When Myriam tries to take a saucepan from her and insists that she can prepare the meal herself, Louise gently pushes her back and tells her to rest and enjoy the children; she will cook, and Myriam will hardly notice her. That reassurance describes the bargain’s seduction: Louise’s expanding labor gives Myriam more time with her children, while also allowing the employer to surrender more of the household’s daily work.

Louise becomes both invisible and indispensable. Myriam stops calling to warn her about late returns, and Mila no longer asks when her mother will come home. The narration compares Louise to the unseen stagehands who move scenery in the dark, holding the fragile family arrangement together from behind the scenes. Myriam accepts being cared for even as she apologizes for abusing Louise’s kindness. Louise insists she is there for that purpose. Myriam gives her inexpensive earrings, an orange cake, and unwanted clothes, and hides new purchases in an old cloth bag until Louise has left, hoping to prevent hurt or jealousy. These gestures suggest a desire to be considerate, but they do not settle the underlying question of how much work Louise is expected to do.

The hours lengthen until Louise sometimes sleeps in the apartment. Paul worries aloud that she might one day accuse them of exploitation. Myriam promises to restore clearer limits, yet admits to herself that she is secretly pleased by work Louise performs without being asked. The arrangement is therefore not simply a story of generous care or deliberate abuse: the employers benefit from tasks and time they have not formally requested, while gratitude and intimacy soften the employment boundary without removing the unequal power behind it.

The Cost of Possessive Care

The darker possibilities of Louise’s attachment appear in the children’s games. She elaborates elaborate pretend scenarios for Mila, but her preferred game is hiding without rules. She vanishes into places from which she can watch the children search: under a bed, behind a door, in a laundry basket, or inside a cupboard. When Adam and Mila call and begin to cry, Louise sometimes stays hidden. Adam sobs in confusion; Mila fears that the nanny has left them alone and will not return. Louise watches their distress without coming out. The game turns the ordinary ritual of hide-and-seek into an experiment in abandonment, making the children’s dependence visible through fear.

At a playground, after Mila has wandered away and then thrown herself back into Louise’s arms, the nanny holds her so tightly that Mila protests that she cannot breathe. Louise warns her not to stray again and tells her that a stranger could take her, hide her, and keep her from her parents. Mila bites Louise’s shoulder until it bleeds. That evening neither tells Myriam what happened. Their silence creates a secret grievance binding them together even as it reveals how care can tip into coercion and how a child’s refusal can take the form of physical resistance.

The employment arrangement also makes the family’s dependence painfully clear when Louise is sick and fails to arrive one morning. Myriam, dressed for an important court appearance, fears that Louise has disappeared and says that she and Paul have humiliated her by treating her like an ordinary employee. Paul suggests looking for her address in the contract. When Louise eventually calls to apologize, she explains that she was too ill to get out of bed and had slept through the phone. Myriam is ashamed that she had imagined abandonment before considering a mundane illness, as though Louise could not be tired or unwell. The episode briefly exposes the bodily limits obscured by her apparent reliability.

The novel’s later investigation returns to the hired caregiver’s place in the household through the bathroom routine. On the day of the murders, Louise moves toward giving the children a bath in the afternoon; investigators ask Paul whether they usually enjoyed bathing and show him the small, extremely sharp ceramic knife used in the crime. He identifies it as a knife Thomas had brought from Japan, which Myriam had put away high in a cupboard to keep it from the children. In retrospect, the familiar work of bathing, like Louise’s earlier daily care, becomes inseparable from the household’s vulnerability. Her arrival initially enables Myriam’s return to legal work, but the intimacy built through labor, reliance, and silence proves no guarantee of safety.