After the Crash Read Free Page B

accent, which
Mariam could not locate, but which was indisputably the same.
And yet, in Emilie’s case, the accent somehow seemed wrong; it did
not fit her personality. The same could be said of her name: Emilie was too ordinary, too bland for a girl like that. Emilie, like Marc,
was blonde and, like Marc, she had blue eyes. But while Marc’s
gestures and expressions were clumsy, simple, unoriginal, there was
a je-ne-sais-quoi about Emilie, a strikingly different way of moving,
a kind of nobility in the way she held her head, a pure-bred elegance
and grace that seemed to suggest aristocratic genes, a privileged
education.
And that was not the only mystery. In terms of money, Emilie’s standard of living appeared to be the very opposite of Marc’s.
Mariam had a knack for evaluating, in an instant, the quality and
cost of the clothing worn by her students, from H&M and Zara to
Yves Saint Laurent.
Emilie did not wear Yves Saint Laurent, but she wasn’t far off.
What she was wearing today – a simple, elegant orange silk blouse
and a black, asymmetrical skirt – had undoubtedly cost a small fortune. Emilie and Marc might be from the same place, but they did
not belong to the same world.
And yet they were inseparable.
There was a complicity between them that could not be created in only a few months at university. It was as if they had lived
together all their lives, perceptible in the countless protective gestures that Marc made towards Emilie: a hand on her shoulder, a
chair pulled out for her, a door held open, a glass filled without
asking. It was the way a big brother would behave towards a little
sister.
Mariam wiped down a chair and put it back in position,
her mind still churning over the enigma of Marc and Emilie.
It was as if Marc had spent the previous two years preparing
the ground for Emilie’s arrival, keeping her seat warm in the lecture hall, a table near the window in the Lenin. Mariam sensed
that Emilie was a brilliant student, quick-witted, ambitious and
determined. Artistic. Literary. She could see that determination
whenever the girl took out a book or a folder, in the way she
would skim confidently over notes that Marc would take hours to
master.
So, could they be brother and sister, in spite of their social
differences?
Well, yes. Except that Marc was in love with Emilie!
That, too, was blindingly obvious.
He did not love her like a brother, but like a devoted lover. It was
clear to Mariam from the first moment she saw them together. A
fever, a passion, completely unmistakable.
Mariam did not have a clue what this could mean.
She had been shamelessly spying on them for a month now. She
had glanced furtively at the names on files, essays, placed on the
table. She knew their surname.
Marc Vitral.
Emilie Vitral.
But ultimately, that did not help. The logical supposition was
that they were brother and sister. But then what about those incestuous gestures? The way Marc touched Emilie’s lower back . . . Or
perhaps they were married? She was only eighteen: very young for
a student to marry, but not impossible. And, of course, it was technically possible that they just happened to have the same name, but
Mariam could not believe in such a coincidence, unless they were
cousins or belonged to a more complicated kind of family, with
step-parents or half-siblings . . .
Emilie seemed very fond of Marc. But her expression was more
complex, difficult to read. She often seemed to stare into space,
particularly when she was alone, as if she were hiding something,
a deep sadness . . . It was that melancholy which gave Emilie a
subtle distance, a different kind of charm to all the other girls on
campus. All of the boys in the Lenin stared hungrily at her, but –
probably because of that reserve – none of them dared to approach
her.
None except Marc.
Emilie was his. That was why he was here. Not for his courses.
Not for the university. He was here purely so he could be with