This is Life Read Online Free

her.
    She took it, and looked at it. It was a personal card, with the professor’s home address and phone number on it, along with a personal email address. She had a pretty good idea that this
was unusual, and wondered whether or not she should start to become suspicious of his motives. She put it in her pocket. ‘Thank you, professor,’ she said.
    He paused, looked straight into her eyes, and said, ‘Any time.’ He looked down at his hands, which were clutching the edge of the desk. ‘Day or night.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly. She looked sadly at the dull gold band on his ring finger. ‘Of course.’
    He watched her go, and when the door had shut behind her he picked up the framed photograph that faced him throughout his every working day. It was a picture of his wife. He smiled. She would
have been about the same age as this Aurélie Renard when it was taken. She too was a little below average height, and slim, and very pretty, in a no-make-up kind of way. She was what
Professor Boucher would have called a compact blonde .
    At last, he allowed himself a sigh.

III
    W eeks later, when she watched the footage, Aurélie Renard calculated that when the stone smashed into the baby’s face it would have
been travelling at somewhere between sixty-five and seventy kilometres per hour. The impact made little sound, just a dull smack that had been buried by the sound of the traffic and the hurdy-gurdy
before it could reach the built-in microphone. She found it strange that something so terrible had made so little noise.
    People were still making their way through the square. Some of them glanced her way, having caught an unexpected flash of movement and noticed her video camera. Uninterested, and just wanting to
get out of the cold, they walked on. To her, they might as well have not been there. She saw only the baby, reclining in his buggy. There was a terrible stillness. Perhaps she had killed him.
    She put her hand to her heart with relief when his little hands rose and clenched into fists. She hoped that this meant he was fine. She hadn’t spent a great deal of time with babies, and
had no idea that this moment of calm was usual when they are hurt, that it takes a while for the shock to subside and the pain to register. Three seconds after the event, the child’s face
crumpled in confusion and despair, and tears spilled from his eyes. His mouth opened wide, but there was still no sound. Then, on the seventh second, it came, a bottomless howl.
    Aurélie lowered the video camera from her shoulder. She put a hand to her mouth as she shook with worry. The possibility of such an outcome had not crossed her mind, and she realised just
how stupid she had been. She had no idea what to do next, and it was only then that it occurred to her that the baby had not been making his own way across the square. He came as part of a package
with a mother, and she was leaning over him, dabbing his face with a cloth. Only when this was done did the mother turn away from the inconsolable child and give Aurélie a look of disgust
that she would never forget.
    She knew she deserved it. She wanted to turn and run, to get out of there as quickly as she could, and try to convince herself that this had never happened. She couldn’t, though. She had
to say sorry, to the howling child and to his mother. Burning with shame, she made her way over to the scene she had created.
    She stood silently, cringing as the mother made a point of ignoring her, choosing instead to lean over the buggy and apply a folded baby wipe as a compress to the child’s face. It
wasn’t until minutes later, when the baby had at last stopped crying, that she turned to Aurélie, gave her an ice-cold smile and said, softly, ‘You did a good job. Look . .
.’ She lifted the makeshift compress, and pointed to a red blotch on his face. ‘That’ll bruise nicely. Very nicely indeed. Another centimetre in this direction,’ she
pointed, ‘and you’d have