Angela

Angela is one of the infant twins Alice Espanet killed. Her name enters the narrative through the trial, where the children have often been reduced to a pair, their bodies, or the evidence of a crime; naming them makes their individual lives—and the loss of them—harder to keep at a distance.

Identity and Place in the Story

Angela was one of Alice Espanet and Ritxi’s twins, alongside Alex. The Narrator learns their names when the prosecutor first says them in court. Until then, she had not known them and had not noticed their absence: the children had existed in her thoughts as babies, twins, bodies, and ashes. The discovery changes the terms in which she can think about them. With names, she observes, the case becomes more difficult to bear.

The account gives no specific surnames or birth date, saying only that Alex and Angela had a Basque first surname and a French second surname, were born one year and died the next. The Narrator imagines a future of summer camps in Germany, boarding school in Switzerland, and a prestigious university in the United Kingdom or United States. These are possibilities she projects onto the children, not events in their lives; their imagined futures sharpen the contrast with the brief life that was actually theirs.

The Twins’ Deaths

The killing was planned for a Thursday afternoon when the nanny was off and Alice’s husband was away. Alice gave the twins half a pear, mashed with a fork, and then some formula; the autopsy confirmed that this was their final snack. She undressed them and left one on the floor while she drowned the first. Afterward, she placed the dead baby on a bed and picked up the second. The account says a minute was enough, but does not identify which twin died first.

Alice later said she could not remember the order, and the forensic evidence established only that both children died at around the same time. The uncertainty leaves Angela’s place in the sequence unresolved. The narration’s clinical details—the meal, the undressing, the bed—set the ordinary preparations of childcare against the deliberate act that followed.

Naming and the Trial

The prosecutor’s closing argument begins by recalling the children’s names. She presents Angela and Alex as people with lives ahead of them, who needed care and love and were unique. She then rejects the assumption that a mother must be incapable of cruelty unless she is mad, framing that assumption as an outdated prejudice about femininity. The Narrator finds the prosecutor’s delivery somewhat theatrical, but does not yet withdraw her trust.

Angela’s name thus has a double presence in the trial: it identifies one of the victims, and it resists the reduction of the twins to evidence in a case. For the Narrator, learning the names does not clarify how the crime happened or resolve the uncertainties surrounding it. It makes the children more particular—and makes the loss more difficult to hold at the remove that anonymity had allowed.