Léa and Albert’s marriage

Léa and Albert’s marriage is shaped by a tension between the family Léa deliberately chose and the escape she sought when pregnancy made that choice feel confining. She says she chose Albert exclusively for his qualities as a father; during and after her pregnancies, an affair with Fabrice became a way to feel alive, repeatedly putting the marriage at risk. The account offers no settled resolution, only the costs of a partnership tested by parenthood, betrayal, and forgiveness.

A partnership organized around parenthood

At a celebration attended by the Narrator, Albert is identified as Léa’s partner. He drinks heavily, while Léa approaches the Narrator to complain about the party: she considers it stupid, objects that it was Albert’s idea, and resents how much it cost. The episode does not explain the whole marriage, but it gives their public life an uneasy texture. The occasion meant to gather people around a family celebration leaves Léa voicing frustration with her partner and the expense of the event.

Léa later describes the decision behind the relationship more starkly. She had wanted children since she was sixteen, but pregnancy brought doubts she had previously ignored. Thinking about friends who seemed to enjoy adult freedom without its disadvantages, and about the Narrator living in England, sharpened her sense of what she might be giving up. She concluded that she had chosen Albert solely for his qualities as a father, not for any other reason. Parenthood was therefore not just one part of their life together: it was the purpose by which Léa says she had selected him, and the very prospect that made her question the choice.

The affair during pregnancy

When Léa was three months pregnant, she met Fabrice, a father at the school where she was doing a placement. He was married, had two children, and was twelve years older than her. Their attraction quickly became a clandestine affair, with repeated meetings at the Hôtel d’Angleterre as Léa’s pregnancy advanced. Fabrice was willing to act as father to the child, although the baby was not his. Léa describes the affair as a turbulent mixture of fear, guilt, and sexual desire, punctuated by breakups that repeatedly failed to hold.

For Léa, the affair was connected to the doubts that pregnancy had opened up about her life with Albert. She says she suddenly needed an escape and a way to feel alive. Without Fabrice, she thought, she might have returned to vomiting after meals, or to something worse. This is Léa’s own explanation of the affair, not a claim that it repaired the marriage or removed the danger to it. A month before giving birth, she decided to end the relationship and managed to resist contacting Fabrice during the final weeks of pregnancy.

That separation did not last through childbirth. The night after the birth, while still in hospital, Léa sent Fabrice a message to tell him that everything had gone well. During the following days, as the baby adjusted to life, Albert discovered the affair. Fabrice’s wife learned of it too, and the story spread to the school where Léa was doing her placement and throughout the Vaucluse department. The discovery turned a secret relationship into a public crisis in Léa and Albert’s family life.

Repeated returns and threatened forgiveness

Léa’s account suggests that the first discovery did not simply end her attachment to Fabrice. When her daughter Laure was born, she says she managed to resist contacting him, partly because the earlier drama was still fresh. After the birth of her younger daughter, Agnès, she called him again, shortly after the end of the postpartum confinement period. By then, she says, she no longer cared about the consequences and knew Albert would not give her a third chance if he found out. Her awareness of that limit did not prevent her from arranging a meeting.

Fabrice had moved to a small village in Provence and had returned to his wife after separating from her. He nevertheless answered Léa’s call and met her at a hotel on the outskirts of town. Léa brought Agnès with her; she had worked out when to give the baby a bottle so she would sleep and where to leave the stroller. The meeting did not become sexual: Fabrice appeared sad and overwhelmed, watched the clock and his surroundings, and seemed eager to leave. Léa says she retained her pride, though she had planned for the possibility of an affair. The scene shows how her renewed pursuit placed the marriage at risk again, even when Fabrice did not reciprocate.

What the relationship reveals

Léa and Albert’s marriage is narrated less through shared domestic moments than through the pressure pregnancy and childcare place on Léa’s sense of choice. She wanted children for years, yet becoming pregnant prompted her to measure family life against the freedom she imagined others possessed. Her account makes Albert’s fatherly qualities central to her original decision, while her affair becomes an attempted escape from the consequences of that decision. This contrast exposes a painful split between wanting motherhood and fearing what it might demand of her.

The episodes also resist a neat account of betrayal followed by closure. Léa ends the affair before one birth, resumes contact after it, and calls Fabrice again after the birth of another daughter, all while recognizing that Albert’s willingness to forgive has a limit. The marriage’s future is not supplied. What the narrative does establish is the recurring conflict: Albert is the partner Léa chose as a father, while Fabrice represents, in her explanation, a route toward feeling alive outside the family role. The distinction helps explain Léa’s choices without turning them into proof that the marriage was either secure or definitively over.