Apocalypse Baby. Виржини Депант

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      Three of them are doing the talking, the brunette and the two boys. The two other girls are holding back, laughing at the right moments, but saying nothing for now. The Hyena asks, “But the boys she was interested in, where did they come from, then?”

      “When we were still friends, she liked heavy metal. She didn’t miss any concert by PUY, she was very in with them . . . Well, you know what I mean . . . she was a groupie. I didn’t want to go with her to see them, it was around the time she was giving me too much grief with all this acting like a slut.”

      “PUY?” The Hyena gets out her notebook.

      Amandine confirms: “Panic Up Yours, hard rock, heavy metal. I don’t know, it’s not my scene really.”

      “I think I’ll remember the name.”

      “I don’t know if she was still hanging around them, because she changed, Valentine did, over the year.”

      “Did she talk about her parents? Her home, at all?”

      “Not a lot, no.”

      “I know she adores her father.”

      “But the stepmother not so much, normal, isn’t it? She doesn’t have to sleep with her.”

      “What did you think, when you heard the news she’d disappeared?”

      “We flipped, we were worried for her.”

      A blonde girl, with a nose so tiny that you wondered how she got enough oxygen, dressed like a Roma but every garment must have cost a fortune in the Marais, speaks up for the first time. “We thought something horrible had happened, of course. When a girl goes missing, you’re always afraid they’re going to find her dead in a ditch, beaten up.”

      “None of you thought she might have run away?”

      This option shocks them more than the dead-in-a-ditch version. “Run away?” Leaving behind the PlayStation 3, the fridge full of food, the domestic help, Daddy’s credit card . . .

      “Yeah. Could be, of course. She’d changed a lot lately. She changed the way she looked, she wasn’t so much fun, more distant . . . She could have been planning something. You could tell, couldn’t you?”

      The girl who said this was drop-dead gorgeous: all the time we’ve been sitting in the bar her face has been so radiant that it’s as if the sunlight was falling only on her. She has the look we used to call BCBG when I was a kid, bon chic bon genre, rich girl, good home, blue, white, and beige, which she wears just the kind of casual way that makes her look fantastic. She’s tall and slender, elegant figure, the perfect image of the kind of bitch the aristocracy turns out best. This femme fatale speaks incredibly slowly, she must have been smoking joints all day. The Hyena gives her an odd look.

      “And you talked about it with her, when you thought she’d changed?”

      “No. We weren’t friends, actually. But I could tell by looking at her. She looked different.”

      “Yeah, it was obvious that she’d let her appearance go, these last months.”

      “Perhaps she was depressed, heading for a breakdown? She wore a lot of black, but like Noir Kennedy, vintage gear, sort of I’m-giving-up-on-life black.”

      “Yeah, that’s right, she stopped wearing designer stuff. But before, she used to like it fine.”

      “Yeah, before, she liked to dress cool.”

      “Then after a bit, not to be bitchy, but she had a bit of a punky look, like when you listen to Manu Chao?”

      The drop-dead beauty shrugs. “Yeah, I think she wanted to be distinctive.”

      These kids around the table are actually pretty easygoing, compared to the ones I usually meet. They tease each other, but they’re not aggressive. There’s no obvious tyrant among them, and they haven’t got that arrogant manner you generally find in rich little Parisians. When they talk about Valentine, I find they sound quite calm. Still, that kind of sex-mad girl isn’t usually so popular nowadays. These kids are resigned to never really being part of the elite. They’ve all dropped out. They don’t have that juvenile effervescence that their equivalents in a swanky suburb like Neuilly would have. They’ve already tasted failure. They have all seen in their parents’ eyes the disappointment at having to enroll them in a private school for children who are not making the grade.

      WE GO BACK to the car. The Hyena is concentrating on one precise point. “The pretty girl, back there, I couldn’t work out if she was a baby dyke, or whether I just found her so stunning I mistook my desires for realities.”

      “Is that all you really care about? Come back to earth, she’s way too pretty to be a dyke.”

      I regret saying this the minute it’s out of my mouth, because it seems particularly insulting, but she just stares at me for a couple of moments, then bursts out laughing.

      “You know, your mind is like Jurassic Park live.”

      “Well anyway, she’s sixteen at most. You’re interested in her?”

      “I’m interested in all girls. That’s simple, easy to remember, even you can do that. Right, now I’m off to see Antonella, the woman I sent to see the father. Are you coming, or do you want me to drop you off?”

      “Whatever you like. Perhaps you want to keep your contact confidential.”

      “Keep my what what? You really are weird. Lucky for you you met me, because on your own, where would you be?”

      The Hyena slows down at a pedestrian crossing and with a nod of her head lets a pregnant woman go by.

      “See that one’s face? Don’t tell me she couldn’t have given it a bit of thought before reproducing . . . some people, nothing stops them.”

      “Do you ever, when you’re on a case like this, do you ever feel frightened, I mean of what you’re going to find?”

      “Yes. It’s happened to me before.”

      “And that doesn’t upset you? You don’t imagine that Valentine could be in the grip of some sadist who’s torturing her? Or who’s even killed her. And yet here we are, taking our time.”

      “No, frankly, I think she’s gone to see her mother. I think we’re going to spend a few days messing about in Paris so we can say we did, then we go straight for the mother. Don’t you think? If your mother had abandoned you, you’d want to go and see her, wouldn’t you, see what she’s like?”

      “I don’t know, mine didn’t abandon me, on the contrary she calls me up all the time.”

      “Well, anyway, okay, tomorrow when you go and see the parents, do me a favor and observe the father’s reactions when you mention her real mother. And the stepmother’s reactions too. The stepmother, a priori we’re suspicious of her, right?”

      “Why?”

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