Avignon

Avignon is both a point of access to the story of Jade and the setting of a long-awaited meeting between the narrator and Léa, one of the people who knew Jade best. The city brings together the public circulation of the case and private disclosures: news of the twins’ deaths has reached Léa, while a night in Avignon gives her the chance to tell the narrator about her own past. The city’s recurring setting, especially the Hôtel d’Angleterre, connects these strands through the places where people meet, conceal things, and finally speak.

A city reached through the investigation

The narrator’s reason for wanting to see Léa becomes more urgent as she considers how to advance her project about Jade. The two exchange messages only sporadically, and Léa remains terse about the subject. The narrator has already told her that she is writing about the case, presenting it as a newspaper assignment that has grown into a book. She admits that this account is a lie: she wants Léa to see her interest as professionally legitimate rather than morbid or opportunistic. Avignon is therefore not simply a destination for a visit; it is where the narrator hopes to speak with a friend whose knowledge of Jade might help her work.

The case has already reached the city before the narrator arrives. On the phone, Léa asks how the narrator knew what had happened. The narrator understands that the news has travelled to Avignon and imagines the coverage: a French woman has drowned her twin children in Spain, and the story has attracted sensational profiles and details, some real and some invented, as well as recollections from neighbors of Jade’s youth. She explains that the events took place only sixty-five kilometres from her home and caused a major stir. Léa says that they are in shock and has nothing more to add. The brief exchange establishes the distance between Avignon and the case’s immediate setting, while showing how quickly news and public attention cross it.

Reunion in the city centre

The narrator drives alone to meet Léa during the fourth day of a holiday. Before leaving, she has fed Erik thoroughly and given him a hurried cuddle; the drive brings an unusual feeling of freedom. Although Léa has recently moved to a village on the outskirts of Avignon, they arrange to meet in the city centre, in the square in front of the Papal Palace, at eight in the evening. The narrator waits almost twenty minutes in oppressive heat, then finishes one beer quickly and orders another. For the first time in a long while, she does not have to breastfeed Erik and can drink without that concern.

The second beer becomes the narrator’s belated signal that summer has arrived. In other years, the season’s arrival has been announced by a warm day, stars seen from a lawn, the distant sound of a festival, or the first mojito of the season. This year, in Avignon, the sensation comes with that first drink in front of the Papal Palace. It is already well into August, but the city gives the narrator a moment in which seasonal change feels immediate and personal. The scene also marks a temporary change in her routine: away from Erik’s care, she can occupy an evening as a visitor and friend.

Earlier visits and the Hôtel d’Angleterre

This is the narrator’s second stay in Avignon. Seven years earlier, she had come for the civil baptism of Léa’s first son. Léa did not put her two younger daughters through the same rite; the narrator recalls that the first baptism and the party afterward had been a complete disaster. The remembered visit gives the reunion a longer timeline, linking the women’s present lives as mothers to an earlier occasion that had already brought them together in the city.

After their evening out, Léa is found in the bathrooms, cooling her face. The narrator offers to take her to the hotel, without properly considering how much alcohol her driver may have consumed. They arrive safely and, because Léa does not want to go home while her child is sleeping with his grandmother, the narrator lets her stay in her room. It is on a bed at the Hôtel d’Angleterre that Léa tells her story. The hotel is not a neutral backdrop: it is also where Léa had met Fabrice during her pregnancy, in a series of secret appointments. The place recurs as both the site of the affair and the setting for its retrospective telling.

A place of disclosure

Léa recounts that she met Fabrice, a married father of two who was twelve years older, when she was three months pregnant and doing a placement at a school where he was a parent. Their relationship continued through four, five, or six clandestine meetings at the Hôtel d’Angleterre as her pregnancy advanced. Fabrice was willing to act as father to the baby, and Léa’s pregnancy unfolded amid an affair marked by fear, guilt, and desire. They repeatedly broke things off, only to meet again after one of them proposed another final conversation. A month before the birth, Léa managed to end the relationship and resist returning to it during the remaining weeks.

The night after giving birth, however, she sent Fabrice a message from the hospital, telling herself it was only to let him know that all had gone well. While the baby was adjusting to life, Albert discovered the affair; Fabrice’s wife soon learned of it too, and the story reached the school where Léa was doing her placement. Léa describes the scandal as becoming known throughout Vaucluse. In Avignon, then, the narrator hears not only about a case already magnified by media attention, but also about the consequences of another secret becoming public. The city’s role in the narrative lies in this meeting of separate stories: it is a place the narrator visits to pursue knowledge about Jade, and the setting where Léa’s own account turns a past hidden in a hotel room into something she can tell.