Boxes: Shocking, hilarious and poignant noir. Pascal Garnier

the same as you. You mustn’t let yourself go. We’ll be stronger, the three of us together. I’m sure Emma would have agreed with me. Brice?’

      Silence.

      ‘Brice, are you listening to me?’

      ‘Yes, Myriam. I’m sorry but I have some eggs on the stove. I’ll have to hang up now.’

      ‘Think about what I’m saying, Brice. We’re very fond of you.’

      ‘Me too, Myriam. Give Simon a hug from me. Thanks. I’ll call you soon!’

      He threw down the receiver as if it were a dead animal and unplugged the cord.

      

      Emma’s picture joined the other photos scattered at his feet like a game of solitaire sprinkled with egg shells. He felt a heaviness in his stomach and stretched out on the camp bed he had set up just beside the boiler. If the truth be known, apart from the kitchen, toilet and bathroom, he scarcely went into the other rooms any more. What was the use of making hundreds of trips to and fro in order to distribute all these things, when he knew that Emma would rearrange them all when she got back? It was easier to settle down in their midst. The icy glow of the fluorescent light, whose timer switch he had craftily deactivated with a piece of sticky tape, didn’t bother him in the least, day or night. A kind of trench dug through the bric-a-brac allowed him to reach the staircase. It was enough. Thanks to this makeshift arrangement, he had everything within reach. This set-up was so much more practical, and it was obvious the objects had accepted him as one of their own.

      That morning in the post, among a pile of brochures advertising monster sales with prices cut, slashed, pared to the bone, there had been a letter from his editor who, while sympathising deeply with his situation, informed him of the urgent need to submit the final drawings for Sabine Does Something Silly. He would be eternally grateful if Brice could deliver them within a week.

      Brice could no longer bear the little girl, still less her creator, Mabel Hirsch. Admittedly the two of them had been his bread and butter for a number of years now, but after about ten volumes he had had enough: Sabine Loses Her Dog, Sabine Takes on Dracula, Sabine Sets Sail, Sabine … The little brat, whose face he riddled with freckles for sport, was seriously taking over his life. As for her creator, he must have killed her at least a hundred times in the course of troubled dreams. He would throttle her until her big frogspawn eyes burst out of their sockets and then tear off all her jewellery. She could no longer move her poor arthritic fingers, they were so weighed down with gold and diamonds. Strings of pearls disappeared into the soft fleshy folds of her double chin. Old, ugly and nasty with it! All that emerged from her scar of a mouth, slathered in blood-red honey, were barbed compliments which wound themselves round your neck, the better to jab you in the back. The widow of a senior civil servant, she had never had to earn a living. Yet she was one of the publishing house’s top sellers. Dominique Porte, the director, put up with the worst humiliations from her, and consequently so did Brice. How many times had she made him do the same illustration over and over again, only to come back to the first one in the end? And yet, according to what she told anyone who would listen, she adored him. That was perhaps true in a sense, for they both had a hatred of childhood, only for different reasons. She had probably never experienced it, while Brice had still not succeeded in leaving it behind.