Reims

Reims connects Bénédicte Ombredanne’s family background to the novel’s aftermath: it is where Éric Reinhardt locates her twin sister, Marie-Claire, and goes to meet her after Bénédicte’s death. The city enters the story through family history, an obituary, and the modest commercial address that becomes the site of Éric’s search for understanding.

Family Roots and Background

Reims is part of the family’s history through Bénédicte and Marie-Claire’s mother, who came from a once-prosperous bourgeois family in the city. Their father, by contrast, was from Condé-sur-Marne, where the family owned a large farm about twenty kilometres away. The parents’ differing backgrounds and beliefs—he a left-wing, Communist, anticlerical farmer, she a practising Catholic known for helping people in need—form part of Marie-Claire’s account of the household in which the twins grew up.

The mother’s family history also survives in heirlooms. She passed valuable old jewelry to her daughters, including a rare ring belonging to Bénédicte, with an eye painted on an enamel medallion. Reims is thus associated not only with the maternal side of the family but with objects that carry its inheritance into the sisters’ adult lives.

Éric’s Search in the City

After learning of Bénédicte’s death, Éric discovers that she had never told him about her brother and two sisters. He searches online for her relatives and finds a company registered in Reims under the name Soins de beauté, directed by Marie-Claire Ombredanne. A local listing connects the address on Rue des Élus to Beauté Turquoise, a beauty salon offering face and body treatments and other services. An obituary notice in the regional newspaper L’Est Républicain also mentions Reims, confirming that the city is connected to the news he has received.

Éric arranges an appointment at the salon and travels to Reims. Guided by his iPhone, he walks to Rue des Élus and arrives at Beauté Turquoise at the appointed time. The route through online records, the obituary, and the salon’s address gives his visit the character of an investigation: he is following the few public traces available to reach a family member whose existence had been unknown to him.

Beauté Turquoise and Marie-Claire

Beauté Turquoise is the practical meeting point between Éric and Marie-Claire. Its shop window displays beauty products and promotional images; behind the entrance, a corridor leads to a more attractively decorated room at the rear. Marie-Claire tells Éric that she is the salon’s sole worker and that she will perform his facial treatment herself. The appointment provides a credible reason for him to meet Bénédicte’s sister in person.

The contrast between the salon’s ordinary business and the weight of Éric’s purpose gives Reims its narrative significance. He arrives presenting himself as a customer, but the encounter opens a way into the family history Bénédicte had not shared with him. Reims is therefore both a real, traceable location in the novel and the setting where private grief begins to become a conversation with someone who knew her from childhood.