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him.
    Thibault said yes.
     
    He’s just parked in an unloading bay outside a building where he’s expected. He looks at his phone. He knows what he’s hoping for. He knows that all day he’s going to be looking at his mobile, waiting for the SMS symbol. His appointments used to be managed by radio. Now, for reasons of confidentiality, the emergency services have a set of mobile phones and a speed-dialling system. Every time the base sends him a new address he can’t help hoping to see Lila’s name. For weeks, that sound is going to torment him.
     
    He hopes she’ll miss him, just like that, all of a sudden. A dizzying void that she can’t ignore. He hopes that as the hours go by she’ll be overtaken by doubts, that little by little she’ll come to realise what his absence means. He wants her to realise that no one will ever love her as he does, beyond the limits she imposes through her fundamental solitude, which she erects against everything around her but never mentions out loud.
    It’s ridiculous. He ’s ridiculous. Grotesque. Who does he think he is? What makes him think he’s exceptional and superior?
    Lila won’t come back. She’ll accept what he said. Right now she’ll be celebrating this outcome: nice and easy, served up on a plate. She knows that people who love you more than you can love them back end up being a burden.
     
    He’s going to see his first patient. He leaves Lila’s perfume still floating in the air, the car windows half open.
     
    ‘You have to pull out the drip,’ Frazera told him one evening. He’s a specialist in breaks, and not just of the wrist. They’d got together for a drink after a long weekend when they’d both been on call. Helped by the warm wave of vodka spreading through his veins, Thibault had talked to him about Lila: his feeling of embracing something insubstantial that crumbled away. That feeling of closing his arms on emptiness, a dead gesture.
    Frazera told him he should get out right away, make a strategic withdrawal. And with a faraway look at the bottom of his glass he concluded: ‘In every passionate relationship there is a kind of savagery that’s in-built and inexhaustible.’
     
    Thibault’s in his car outside a nondescript apartment building. He looks at his phone one last time in case he missed the beep.
     
    He’s done it. He’s done it at last: pulled out the drip.
    He’s done it and he can be proud of himself.
     
    She smiled. As though she was expecting it. As if she’d had ages to get used to the idea.
    She said thanks. Thanks for everything.
    Is it possible to be so blind to someone else’s despair?

As the door closes behind her, Mathilde reaches into her bag until her hand touches metal. She’s always afraid that she’s forgotten something – her keys, her phone, her purse, her travelcard.
    She wasn’t like that before. Then she was never afraid. Then she felt light, she didn’t need to check. Objects didn’t escape her attention. They possessed coordinated motion, natural and fluid. Back then, objects didn’t slide off the furniture, didn’t get knocked over, didn’t get in her way.
    She didn’t make the call. Since her GP retired, she hasn’t had a family doctor. Just as she was on the point of calling the number she found on the Internet it seemed to her that it was pointless. She isn’t ill. She’s tired. Like hundreds of people she passes every day. So by what right, on what pretext, could she call out someone she doesn’t know? She wouldn’t have known how to tell him. To say simply: I can’t go on. And shut her eyes.
     
    She takes the stairs. On the staircase she passes Mr Delebarre, her downstairs neighbour who comes up twice a week to complain the boys are making too much noise. Even when they’re not there. Mr Delebarre puts on his exhausted look and gives her a feeble greeting. Mathilde doesn’t stop. Her hand slides down the banister, her feet are silent on the plush carpet. Today she doesn’t want to