Thomas

Thomas is a friend of Paul whose country house becomes the setting for one of the Massé family’s rare days of unguarded happiness. A songwriter who lives apart to compose and tends a persistent alcoholism, he appears first as a genial host, surrounded by an expansive, almost storybook landscape. Yet his hospitality also leaves behind the ceramic knife that investigators identify as the weapon Louise used to kill Mila and Adam. The contrast between the family’s idyllic visit and the knife’s later meaning makes Thomas a quiet but consequential presence in the story.

Identity and Setting

Thomas is Paul’s friend, a songwriter who retreats to his country house to compose. He raises ponies at the far end of the park, and a small stream crosses a garden so immense that Thomas himself does not know where its boundaries lie. These details give his home an air of abundance and freedom, set apart from the schedules, childcare, and anxieties that shape the Massés’ ordinary life.

His solitude, however, is not presented as uncomplicated pastoral calm. Thomas lives in isolation and maintains a tenacious alcoholism. During the visit he eventually puts the cardboard wine box he is continually drinking from on the table, brushing aside any concern over it with a convivial remark about being among friends and not needing to fuss. The gesture folds his private dependence into the day’s relaxed sociability: he is both the host of a generous refuge and a man whose drinking is conspicuous to those around him.

The Country-House Visit

Thomas invites Paul, Myriam, and their children to spend the day at his country house. In May, the family’s usual concerns recede. With no children of his own, Thomas does not draw Paul and Myriam into talk of nannies, education, or family holidays; in his company, those worries seem small, nearly like caprices. The visit gives the parents room to imagine what lies ahead rather than dwell on daily pressures.

Myriam is confident that Pascal will offer her a partnership in September. She pictures choosing her own cases and delegating tedious work to interns. Paul looks at his wife and children and thinks that the hardest part is over and the best is still to come. Their optimism is specific, domestic, and forward-looking: the day’s pleasure seems to confirm that professional advancement and family happiness can coexist.

The children ride Thomas’s ponies and feed them apples and carrots. They pull weeds in what he calls a vegetable garden, though no vegetables have ever grown there. Paul picks up a guitar and makes everyone laugh; later, the company falls silent as Thomas sings and Myriam joins him in harmony. The children stare at the adults, so composed as they sing in a language the children cannot understand. The scene gathers play, music, and the children’s wonder into a picture of belonging that seems, for a moment, effortless.

Leaving breaks the spell. Adam throws himself on the ground and refuses to go, while the exhausted Mila sobs in Thomas’s arms. Both children fall asleep almost as soon as they are in the car. Paul and Myriam drive in silence, watching the sunset over fields of rapeseed, rest areas, industrial zones, and gray wind turbines. The family’s joy has been real, but its ending is marked by fatigue and a return journey, not by any lasting escape from ordinary life.

The Knife and Its Later Significance

Thomas’s connection to the family takes on a darker significance during the investigation into the children’s deaths. When Captain Nina Dorval asks Paul to identify the murder weapon, he recognizes a small, extremely sharp ceramic kitchen knife Thomas had brought them as a gift from Japan. Its size meant Louise may have been able to conceal part of it in her palm; even simple contact could cut the skin of a fingertip.

Myriam had given Thomas a one-euro coin in exchange for the sushi knife, a gesture intended to ward off bad luck. The family did not use it for cooking. Myriam had put it away in a high cupboard to keep it out of the children’s reach. The object had thus been received as a friendly gift, accompanied by a protective superstition and stored as a precaution. After the murders, the investigators’ questions about who owned it, where it had been kept, and whether Louise had planned her act turn these ordinary details into part of the account of how the weapon could have been available to her.

Narrative Role

Thomas’s visit creates a sharp contrast between the imagined future and the catastrophe that the reader knows has followed. At his house, Myriam anticipates career success and Paul sees the family entering its happiest years; the children play freely, and adults share music. In the investigation, the same family history is approached through a small knife, recalled as an object kept high in a cupboard. The narrative makes neither Thomas nor his gift a sufficient explanation for the crime. Instead, the knife connects an earlier moment of trust to the later reconstruction of violence, while the memory of the country-house day preserves what the Massés believed they still had to look forward to.