Part one

The landline rang on a Thursday in November, at 7:40 p.m., while I was doing the crossword in Le Soir with my red pen.

I was a primary school teacher for thirty-eight years, at the village school in Cuesmes. You don’t lose the habits. I do my crosswords in red pen, I underline the mistakes in the newspaper, and on the coffee table I always keep an old Delacre biscuit tin full of merit cards. Little cards with a blue swallow on them. I used to hand them out to the children who had worked hard. I have two hundred left. I don’t know why I keep them.

I picked up.

“Grandma? It’s me… Grandma, I’ve had an accident. Don’t tell Mum, please, don’t tell Mum…”

A young man’s voice, broken, crying. A voice that could have been my grandson’s. But Hugo has never called me Grandma. Not once in twenty-two years.

When he was two, he couldn’t say “Monique”. He said “Moumou”. It stuck. He’s twenty-two now, studying engineering in Mons, six foot three, and he still calls me Moumou in front of his friends without the slightest embarrassment. It’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever given me, that nickname.

So I knew straight away. And still, my heart started pounding as if it were real. That’s the terrible thing. Even when you know, the voice of a boy crying catches you somewhere.

“What happened?” I asked.

I put on my teacher’s voice. Calm. Slow. The one you use when a child has split their knee open in the playground.

“I hit a woman. In Brussels. She’s in hospital. The police arrested me, Grandma… I’m putting my lawyer on, he’ll explain.”

Another man came on the line. A deep, measured voice, with a slight accent I couldn’t place.

“Good evening, madam. Maître Verhaegen, member of the Brussels Bar. I’m sorry to disturb you at this hour. Your grandson is in police custody. The situation is serious, but it can be settled tonight. Bail of 8,500 euros has to be paid. Otherwise he’ll spend the night in a cell, and tomorrow he’ll be brought before the investigating judge. With a case like this, he could be held on remand for several months.”

I looked at my tin of merit cards. The blue swallow on the lid.

“8,500 euros,” I repeated. “And how do I do that, Maître?”

“In cash, madam. The banks are closed, the procedure is urgent. A sworn court courier will come to your home. Do you have money in the house?”

I did. Like a lot of people my age, I keep an envelope in a shoebox on top of the wardrobe. My husband, Fernand, always used to say: “Banks go bust. A mattress never does.” Fernand died six years ago. The envelope stayed.

“I have a little,” I said. “Not 8,500. Maybe six thousand.”

“That will be enough for tonight,” the lawyer said, very quickly. “Your grandson will pay you back. Above all, madam, don’t tell anyone. Not your daughter, not the neighbours. This is an ongoing judicial matter, and the confidentiality of the investigation is absolute. If you talk about it, you could make your grandson’s situation worse.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll call you back in twenty minutes with the time the courier will come. Stay near the phone.”

He hung up.

I sat there for a minute, my hands flat on the tablecloth. Then I picked up my mobile, the one with the big buttons that my daughter gave me, and first I called Hugo.

He answered on the second ring. There was music behind him, and laughter.

“Moumou! You all right? I’m at Arnaud’s, we’re revising. Well, we’re trying.”

I closed my eyes. Moumou.

“I’m fine, love. I just wanted to hear your voice. Revise hard.”

Then I dialled 101, the Belgian police.

I expected them to tell me to hang up, not to open the door, to put the chain on. But the officer who answered asked me a lot of questions, and then asked me to hold. Another voice came on. A woman, older, who introduced herself as Chief Inspector Wauthier, of the Mons-Quévy police zone.

“Madam,” she said, “for three weeks now a gang has been emptying elderly people’s accounts in the area. Jemappes, Frameries, Saint-Ghislain. Seven victims. We’ve never managed to catch the courier. Would you be willing to help us?”

I’m seventy-nine. I have arthritis in both knees and I stopped driving last winter. Nobody had asked me for help in a very long time.

“Tell me what I need to do,” I replied.

When the lawyer called back, at 8:05, I played the panicked old lady. It wasn’t hard. All I had to do was picture Hugo in a cell.

“The courier will come at nine,” said Maître Verhaegen. “His name is Michaël. He’ll give you a court receipt. You put the money in a sealed envelope and write your grandson’s name on it.”

“And Hugo, is he all right? Can I speak to him?”

A silence.

“He’s with the police, madam. He sends his love.”

At 8:30, two people rang the bell. A young woman in jeans and a man with a sports bag. They looked like grandchildren coming for dinner. Inspector Wauthier had already been there for twenty minutes, hidden in my kitchen between the fridge and the garden door. She had short-cropped grey hair and walking shoes. She reminded me of a headmistress I’d had in 1974.

We prepared the envelope together. Three real fifty-euro notes on top, and underneath, newspaper cut to size. The pages of Le Soir. My crosswords went in too.

I wrote on it, in red pen, in a schoolteacher’s handwriting: Hugo.

“You open the door, you give him the envelope, and you step back,” said the inspector. “Don’t talk to him. Don’t try to keep him there. We’ll take care of the rest. Nothing will happen to you.”

I nodded. I sat down in Fernand’s armchair, facing the front door, with the envelope on my lap. The clock in the living room was making a sound I had never noticed in six years.

9:00. Nothing.

9:02. A car drove down the street without stopping.

9:04, the doorbell rang.

I stood up. My knees creaked. In the kitchen, I heard the inspector hold her breath. I walked down the hallway, turned the key, and opened the door.

And the envelope fell from my hands.