After the Beep
by Hélène Vandermeer
His wife has been dead for three months. At 2.17 a.m. the phone rings: it is her voice. And she knows what the police will ask him in the morning.
Mathieu Kerbrat has not slept properly for ninety-one days. On the eleventh of April, at seventeen minutes past two in the morning, his phone rings: number withheld, twelve seconds of silence, the beep of an old answering machine, and then Élise's voice. Two sentences: do not sell the house, open the wall behind our bed. At twenty to nine the next morning two police officers ring his doorbell and ask him where his wife was on the fourteenth of April the previous year. He answers in perfect good faith, and his answer is false. It will take Mathieu four months, five night-time calls, a wall taken down with a sledgehammer and a box sealed away for eleven years to understand what his wife kept from him — and, above all, why.
Chapters
- 1 Seventeen Minutes Past Two
- 2 Ninety-One Days
- 3 What a Recording Cannot Be
- 4 Twenty to Nine
- 5 Seminar
- 6 What an Alibi Given in Good Faith Manufactures
- 7 June
- 8 Message 2
- 9 Pay-as-You-Go Line Premium
- 10 The Builder Premium
- 11 Hugo Premium
- 12 Every Second of June Premium
- 13 The Apprentice Premium
- 14 Message 3 Premium
- 15 The Wall Premium
- 16 What a Box Contains Premium
- 17 The Sister's Hypothesis Premium
- 18 The Second of June 2003 Premium
- 19 2002 Premium
- 20 Black Ice Premium
- 21 Her Grandmother's Money Premium
- 22 Message 4 Premium
- 23 The Tuesday Premium
- 24 It's You Premium
- 25 The Instructions Premium
- 26 Laval Premium
- 27 Sylvie Premium
- 28 The Workshop Manager Premium
- 29 September 2009 Premium
- 30 What I'm Bringing Premium
- 31 Eleven Minutes Premium
- 32 Message 5 Premium
- 33 Withdrawn from Sale Premium
- 34 Top Right Premium
