The President's Hat. Antoine Laurain

American romantic comedies.

      Since then, Fanny had come to know the Le Havre–Paris route by heart, along with the occasional detour for a brief encounter in Rouen or Trouville. An average of forty-five trips a year, always paid for by Édouard and always taking place outside the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays which, it goes without saying, he spent far away from her, with his family. At the age of twenty-seven, Fanny had achieved the status of mistress. The question of whether she might one day be promoted to official wife was still up in the air, as was the possibility of promotion to executive secretary at the tax office. Her application for that position was ‘under careful consideration’. The recruitment process for her life role was at the same stage, ‘under careful consideration’ by Édouard, whose inertia was thus on a par with that of the civil service.

      ‘You’re perfectly happy with the situation. You’ll never leave your wife, I know you won’t,’ she’d once said angrily.

      ‘That’s not true,’ he had objected. ‘I love you and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life with my wife, I just can’t do it. We’ve stopped making love. There’s nothing between us any more.’

      ‘Well, leave her then!’

      Édouard had shaken his head, looking stricken, and uttered his favourite phrase: ‘You need to give me time.’

      Fanny had fallen back onto the pillows and stared up at the ceiling of the hotel room. This is going nowhere, it occurred to her, looking at him – and not for the first time. The history we share is a chance meeting on a train, our life together now is confined to a hotel room, and we have no future.

      Fanny was right. It was difficult to go anywhere but the bedroom with Édouard. There was no way they could walk down the street holding hands or go round the shops together. The one time they spent a whole weekend in Trouville, Édouard had convinced himself that everyone he knew was going to appear as if by chance at any moment. A work colleague, a friend of his, or worse, a friend of his wife’s might be having a day out in the Norman fishing village. What if someone saw them? It was the same with restaurants. They had never ventured beyond the confines of Batignolles, where Édouard knew no one. But even there, the idea that some acquaintance might decide to dine at the same place made him turn round every time the door opened.

      When they were together in Paris, Édouard would tell his wife he was on a business trip to another part of the country or abroad. This meant swotting up on train timetables, airport strikes and any local festivals he might be expected to know about, having supposedly been in town for them. Fanny understood that the pressure to stay on his toes was a burden on him; she, on the other hand, answered to no one. There was no one waiting up for her but her Minitel screen, on which she and Édouard planned dates and sometimes exchanged messages during the night. It was as if the machine had been invented with illicit lovers in mind.

      It was impossible to call Édouard at home and difficult to get hold of him at the office, so they met by dialling 3615 Aline. Their aliases popped up a few times a month among the names listed in flickering columns on the left of the Minitel’s black screen. Édouard was ‘Alpha75’ and Fanny ‘Sweetiepie’.

      Whenever Édouard found a gap in his diary, he would leave a message for Sweetiepie. Free 22nd–23rd, how about you? to which Sweetiepie would reply, I’ll be there, same time, same place. Less often, they would meet virtually during the night. Édouard would creep out of the marital bed (taking great care to avoid creaky floorboards), turn on the screen, wait for the dial-up tone and meet Sweetiepie at the agreed time. They would exchange sweet nothings and promises. ‘You have a message,’ it would flash at the top of the screen.

      Sometimes, Sweetiepie found her correspondent wasn’t Alpha75 after all but someone making obscene proposals she chose not to take up. As for Alpha75, he was occasionally contacted by men asking if he was free that night and up for real-life action or just a chat. Romance found a way through the murky new world of electronic connections.

      Fanny had been sucked into a bittersweet ‘relationship’ which revolved around seeing her loved one for a quickie a few times a month. She wished she could find the courage to end it with Édouard the next time she saw him, but she knew she didn’t have it in her. This was not the first time she had felt so unsure, both of the situation and herself. If nothing changed between them, it could carry on like this for years.

      She could find nothing to write in her pink notebook, so Fanny put the lid back on her pen and dozed off. Two hours later, she opened her eyes. She would soon be in Paris and the rain was lashing against the window. She sighed, remembering she had not brought an umbrella, when her gaze fell on a black hat on the luggage rack. She looked around. There were only five passengers left on this late train, all of them sitting a good distance away from her. The felt hat could not belong to any of them. Fanny stood up as the train braked, took down the hat and put it on. She looked at her reflection in the darkened window. The hat suited her, and it would be just the thing to keep the rain off her hair.

      The black felt brim acted like a visor, compressing the space around her and marking out a distinct horizon. In Batignolles, a man did a double take as he passed her. What kind of image was she projecting, walking along in the moonlight in her denim mini-skirt, high heels, silver jacket and black hat? That of a hip eighties girl, young, free and sexy, perhaps a little bit forward … She stopped to look at herself in a mirror in the window of a boutique.

      The hat gave her jaw line a new air of distinction; she had put her hair up in a bun to help keep it in place. Perhaps she should always wear it up like this and put on a man’s black felt hat every time she went out. Donning the new accessory had made her feel somehow powerful; it had the same effect as the designer clothes she so rarely treated herself to. Take her Saint Laurent skirt and Rykiel heels, for example. All she had to do was put on the YSL skirt and she immediately felt more attractive. The same went for the shoes, which had cost her almost a quarter of a month’s salary: as soon as she slipped them on and did up the little straps, she felt taller, straighter and more significant. She walked completely differently, strutting along with confidence, and only she knew it was down to the hidden powers of the Rykiel shoes.

      The rain had stopped and Fanny took off the hat. She noticed two letters embossed in gold on the leather band running round the inside of the hat: F.M. Could fate really have meant the hat for her? Here were Fanny Marquant’s own initials.

      ‘Well, then … I’m not letting go of you, my friend, no way’, she murmured, stroking the hat.

      Then she tied her hair up, put the hat back on and set off down the road with an even more determined stride.

      The Batignolles district was deserted but for a few indistinct figures far off in the distance, disappearing into the shadows of apartment blocks. The hotel was not far from here and Édouard would be waiting for her in their room. He would be watching TV or else lying on the bed reading Le Monde.

      As she walked through the lobby, she passed the receptionist. He nodded at her with a knowing smile. Fanny could not stand the man, who knew all the ins and outs of her love life. With his leering smile and creepy nod, she could imagine him roaming the corridors after dark, listening out for the sighs of lovers forced to meet at this crappy hotel. She began climbing the stairs, dragging her case after her, convinced he was looking at her legs. Second floor, room 26.