Tours is where Bénédicte Ombredanne began her adult life with Olivier, combining university study and professional ambition with a marriage that grew increasingly unequal. The city is not described as an independent character in the novel; its significance comes from the plans, separations, and betrayals that take place there.

Setting and Early Plans

In the summer of 1989, after her second year of preparatory studies, Bénédicte decided not to continue for another year when she had not qualified for the École normale supérieure and Olivier had found work in Tours. She moved there to live with him and enrolled in a university degree program. She intended to take the agrégation after completing her master’s degree, which she planned to devote to her favorite writer, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam.

Bénédicte and Olivier married in the spring of 1990, the year she completed her master’s degree. In July 1992, after a year of intensive work, she passed the agrégation with an excellent ranking. Her academic achievement thus belongs to the same period as the deterioration of the marriage: Tours is both the place where she pursued a vocation and the setting of a private life increasingly organized around Olivier’s choices.

Married Life and the First Departure

The couple’s shared finances placed pressure on Bénédicte’s relationship with her parents. Because she and Olivier had agreed to combine their money, funds her parents gave her helped pay for his regular nights out. He did not earn enough to cover all his spending and repeatedly asked her to seek additional money from them. Bénédicte’s twin sister later learned that Olivier spent the money entertaining friends, while Bénédicte was left at home.

Olivier presented his evenings away as a response to spending his working days in an office: he needed to get out into the city and be among people. He said Bénédicte could come with him, but blamed her for preferring to stay home reading or sleeping. The contrast in their routines made her loneliness harder to dismiss as a simple difference in temperament; his preferred life outside the home depended on her accepting that she would often be alone.

One Saturday, tired of spending evenings by herself, Bénédicte gathered her belongings and went to the station. She intended to take the train from Tours to Paris and return to Condé-sur-Marne, but Olivier caught up with her just before she boarded. He brought her back home and promised to spend more time with her. He largely kept that promise, having recognized that she might end the relationship rather than remain indefinitely in the same situation.

A Reprieve and the Marriage’s End

The change brought a period in which Bénédicte was happy with Olivier again. Their travels in Italy accompanied her return to a more radiant state, a marked contrast with the isolation that had led her to the station. This period of renewed happiness, however, did not prevent the marriage from breaking down later.

After Olivier became a sales representative and began spending nights in other towns in the region, Bénédicte found signs that he had other relationships. A hotel receptionist told her that Olivier had not been staying at the hotel where he was supposedly lodging: he left after dropping off his bag and returned the next morning to pay. The account situates this betrayal in the wider course of their marriage rather than identifying the other towns as Tours itself.

In 1992, a family announcement confirmed that Bénédicte’s cousin would take over her father’s farm when he retired. Olivier left the family gathering without saying goodbye and abandoned Bénédicte about a week later, in August, shortly after she passed the agrégation. He requested a divorce in September; the divorce was completed in December. Their marriage had produced no children.

Narrative Significance

Tours anchors the beginning and the end of Bénédicte’s first shared household with Olivier. It is where she attempted to build a future through study and marriage, and from where she nearly escaped by train when the emotional cost of their life together became intolerable. The temporary reconciliation after Olivier’s promise makes the later abandonment more than a single break: it closes a cycle of loneliness, threatened departure, renewed hope, and betrayal.