The Missing Links. Caroline Mondon
carry out her threat. She decided to quit school at the end of term and devote herself to music.
Like her grandmother, who had been a well-known opera singer in the Paris of her youth, Héloïse was gifted with an exceptionally good ear. Her mother, Juliette—who had been a pianist in her own youth—had sent her to the conservatory in Tours, where during her entire childhood Héloïse had received a serious education in music. Now she decided to exploit her gift.
When the crisis broke out between her husband and their daughter, Juliette Rami did not know how to intervene. She had very mixed feelings. She certainly understood the need for her daughter to learn a profession that would assure her financial independence. She herself had suffered enough in not having her own career separate from her husband’s, even though she had finally come to accept this. Yet, at the same time, the thought of her daughter one day becoming the very image of her business-executive husband—obsessed with work to the point of not having an interest in anything else—filled Juliette with horror. She told her daughter she would support her, whatever choice she made. When Héloïse declared that she wanted to become a cello teacher, Juliette gladly accompanied her on the piano while she practiced.
The car slows once more as it enters the last bend before the plateau. Here the road turns sharply left around an ancient vineyard lodge with a crumbled wall. Héloïse’s fingers grip the wheel. It was into this wall her father’s car had crashed one night in June. If only he hadn’t stayed so late at the office that night with that new engineer ...
He had seemed quite engrossed, spending more and more evenings at the factory with the new engineer, whom he’d hired at the beginning of the year. Henri Rami was a workaholic who stayed hours after his employees left for the day, even though he had been strongly encouraged by his doctor to reduce his activity since his heart attack two years before. Héloïse drives on, still deep in thought. If only he hadn’t left at the last minute, as he usually did, to attend her concert ...
Every summer solstice Héloïse and Thomas, her boyfriend since that first trip in the Fiat 500, played sonatas for cello and piano in the little church in Chenonceaux. The concerts were free, even though Thomas played with a chamber music ensemble that was beginning to have some success. It was their chance to play for their families and childhood friends in a particularly calm and lovely Touraine atmosphere.
Héloïse frowns at the sudden thought that her father never accepted her boyfriend not only because he was a musician but perhaps also because he wasn’t an engineer ...
Once the vineyard lodge is behind her, Héloïse takes a deep breath. She has averted her fears. Her father’s life and death are now a part of the past. Ahead of her are fields of late-season sunflowers, their blackened heads standing out starkly against the background of the forest she loves so much. And between them, at the end of a path to the right where a sign reads Industrial Zone, and looking like a grounded flying saucer, sits the H. Rami enterprise.
The “industrial zone” of the district consists, in fact, of this one solitary enterprise. The few trees surrounding it seem to have escaped from the nearby forest and approached the large bay windows in the building’s golden-yellow walls in order to peer into them.
The H. Rami company designs and builds wooden furniture with metal components for boats, shops, and community-use buildings. The isolated trees seem to question the fate of those companions uprooted from their natural habitats to be processed into goods. The products that left through the big doors on the south side of the building were for the most part luxury goods, and this seemed to satisfy the remaining delegation of trees, which offered their generous shade to the two parking lots.
Héloïse’s car pulls into the lot reserved for management and visitors. At this hour it is deserted, yet she hesitates in choosing a place, her tires screeching as she turns the wheel sharply one way and then the other. Six vacant spots are reserved, each with a small sign announcing the name of one of the chosen few. Only one place is reserved for visitors. She finally parks in the spot that still bears her father’s name, and makes a mental note to have the name changed to that of his successor before she leaves.
She gets out of the car, absentmindedly picking up her bag. As she heads toward the giant wooden door, which contrasts sharply with the metallic walls, she thinks of Thierry Ambi, the engineer. He brings out conflicting feelings in her. He was the last person to see her father alive, but did not attend the funeral with all the other employees. He gave the excuse that his son was having health problems. And now, it is his name that is to replace her father’s on the little parking sign ...
She has an appointment with him at eight o’clock this morning to prepare for the monthly meeting for all supervisors of the company at nine o’clock. It is the first meeting since the return to work at the end of August, after the summer holidays. At that meeting, she will announce her decision to name him the new chief executive officer. It should come as no surprise: everyone remarked on his effectiveness in dealing with the company’s day-to-day affairs since the accident, even though he had only been there a short six months.
Thierry had initially arrived to set up the new system for managing all the company’s databases—“ERP,”1 he called it, without anyone knowing the meaning of this awkward-sounding acronym. This responsibility allowed him to quickly learn all the details of running the business. Gossip within the company was that, given the amount of time he spent with the boss, it would have been too bad for him if Thierry hadn’t been up to date with absolutely everything. No one seemed aware that it wasn’t for Thierry’s sake that the boss spent so much time with him: Henri Rami didn’t know how to work without his great efforts being observed. To feed his inspiration, he needed a subordinate by his side, preferably an admiring one.
His wife, Juliette, played this doting, attentive role when Henri had first established the company. He had grown the company from its original roots as a reputable carpentry shop run by his father, a master carpenter. In contrast Hubert, a childhood friend who joined the business in its early days as a salesperson, was incapable of taking anything seriously for more than five minutes. As the son of a rich family, he was so happy to have escaped a predictably dull future that he couldn’t keep himself from joking every time he brought in an order. Hubert teased Henri, who struggled to adapt the company’s manufacturing capacity to keep up with the increasing demand, and who lacked a sense of humor when he was the target of such joking.
Juliette, for her part, was able to spend the entire day in silence by her husband’s side, looking on in admiration. For this privilege, she had given up playing piano and had learned, without anyone’s help, first the role of secretary and then that of accountant. She eventually came every morning to work at the factory with her husband for more than fifteen years. Then one day she suddenly stopped going. Héloïse quickly understood that a certain “Georgette,” who was a certified accountant—as Georgette explicitly pointed out every time she introduced herself—had replaced her mother in her role at work.
As Héloïse swings open the heavy door on the office side of the factory, the sun is already high enough that she can feel its hot rays on her neck. She walks down the narrow corridor flanked with offices. Her eyes fall on Georgette who, having heard a car, has half-emerged from her office in order to identify the visitor. On seeing Héloïse, her face stiffens with the double effect of a polite grimace and an ill-concealed disapproving pout. She retreats to her nervous habit of convulsively scratching her right hand, where a rash leaves her skin an angry red.
Georgette has not forgotten her last meeting with Héloïse, when the latter asked what a balance sheet and an income statement were and how the budget was constructed. Héloïse didn’t understand any of Georgette’s explanations, as tiresome as they were detailed, and had made no secret of it.
“Good morning, Georgette!”
“Good morning, Miss Héloïse.”
“Georgette, I am surely past the age to be called Miss. You can just call me Héloïse.”
Her tone is that of someone who has made this admonition many times. Georgette