A FRESH START
Claire lingered in Pierre’s arms. She felt that the moment had come, insistently and now inevitably. Just as one fast-forwards through a film, in a flash she saw the stages of this passion which for two years had been burning in her life. They had first met at the annual home-automation sector convention. (Claire was a specialist in self-adjusting lighting, Pierre an expert in smart kitchens). At the evening hour when the participants of the conference went down to the hotel’s nightclub to relax, a slow dance had brought them together never more to part. Pierre was newly divorced, but Claire was living with her husband and their two young children in a beautiful apartment for which they had taken out a heavy mortgage. Ever since that first dance, however, none of that had mattered. Claire swung to the rhythm of their secret appointments. Pierre fulfilled her, and she felt that beside him she led a very different life, one that was full and happy, and which would fill her with infinite b liss.
“I’ve decided to divorce him,” she announced with a sigh. Pierre looked at her with his v elvet eyes.
“Are you really ready to let go of everything – your husband, your children – and face such a long and painful procedure? Truly?”
“For you, I’d go to the end of the world,” sighed Claire. “I’ve made up my mind: in an hour’s time I will have told my husband everything, and our new life can finally begin.” Claire slipped on her coat and kissed Pier re’s lips. “See you tomorrow, my love,” he sighed.
Pierre watched her leave the bar, waited a minute, then pulled a mobile phone out of his pock et.
“Hello, Catherine,” he said, covering the phone with his hand. “Are you still OK to meet up tonight? Your place or mine?” Marc Lambron ( born in Lyon, 1957) is a French writer, bureaucrat, journalist and literary critic. In 2014 he was elected to seat 38 of the Académie française. The author of ironic essays on Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, his latest book, published in 2018, is Vie et mort de Michael Jackson (Cartels-RMN).