Read an extract from Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan

I’d like to describe how L. came into my life, and in what circumstances. I’d like to describe precisely the context that enabled L. to invade my private sphere and patiently take possession of it. But it’s not that simple.

And as I write the phrase, ‘how L. came into my life’, I’m aware of how pompous the expression sounds: a bit overblown; the way it emphasises a narrative arc that does not yet exist; a desire to announce a turning point or plot twists. Yes, L. ‘came into my life’ and turned it upside down: profoundly, slowly, surely, insidiously. L. came into my life as though she were stepping onto a stage right in the middle of the play, as though a director had ensured that everything around her dimmed to make way for her; as if L.’s entrance had been prepared for so as to communicate its importance, so that at this precise moment the spectator and the other actors on stage (me, in this case) would look only at her; so that everything around us froze, and her voice carried right 9

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to the back of the auditorium; in short, so that she would make an impact.

But I’m rushing ahead.

I met L. at the end of March. By the autumn, L. was part of my life, like an old friend, on familiar ground. By the autumn, we already had our private jokes, a shared language of hints and double meanings, of glances that sufficed for us to understand each other. Our compli­ city was fuelled by shared confidences but also by what remained unsaid, by unspoken observations. In hindsight, and in view of the violence that later marked our relationship, it’s tempting to say that L. broke in to my life, with the sole aim of annexation, but that would be untrue.

L. entered gently, with boundless delicacy, and I experienced amazing moments of complicity with her.

On the afternoon of the day we met, I’d been invited to do a signing at the Paris Book Fair. I’d met my friend Olivier there. He was a guest on a live broadcast from the Radio France stand. I mingled with the public as I listened to him. We then had a sandwich in a corner with his elder daughter, Rose, all of us sitting on the shabby Book Fair carpet. My signing had been advertised for two thirty, so we didn’t have a lot of time. It wasn’t long before Olivier told me I looked exhausted, truly; he was worried about how I’d get through ‘all this’, by which he meant having written such a personal, intim­ate book, and the reverberations that the book had 10

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caused – reverberations he knew I hadn’t anticipated, and for which I was consequently unprepared.

Later, Olivier offered to walk with me to my publisher’s stand. As we passed a dense, tightly packed queue, I looked to see which author was at the other end of it. I remember looking for the poster that would reveal their name, and then Olivier whispered: ‘I think they’re for you.’ The queue stretched into the distance, then turned the corner, all the way to the stand where I was expected.

At another time, even a few months earlier, this would have filled me with joy and maybe even pride.

I’d spent hours waiting around for readers at book fairs, sitting patiently behind piles of my books without anyone coming. I was familiar with that feeling of helplessness, that rather shameful solitude. I was now overwhelmed by an entirely different sensation: a kind of dizziness. For a moment it felt too much; too much for one person, too much for me. Olivier said he had to head off.

My book had come out at the end of August and for several months I’d been going from city to city, from events to signings, readings to discussions, in bookshops, libraries and media centres, where increasing numbers of readers awaited me.

It sometimes overwhelmed me, the feeling of having hit the bull’s eye, of having carried thousands of readers along in my wake, the probably mistaken feeling of having been understood.

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I’d written a book whose impact I hadn’t foreseen.

I’d written a book whose effect on my family and those around me spread in a series of waves, causing collateral damage I hadn’t anticipated; a book that quickly separated my unwavering supporters from my false allies, and whose delayed effects were to prove long-lasting.

I hadn’t imagined the book’s proliferation and its consequences. I hadn’t imagined the image of my mother, reproduced hundreds, then thousands of times, the cover photo that contributed significantly to the spread of the text, the photo that very quickly became dissociated from her and now was no longer my mother but a character in the novel, blurred and diffracted.

I hadn’t imagined readers feeling moved or fearful; I hadn’t imagined that some would cry in front of me, nor how hard it would be for me not to cry with them.

There was that very first time, in Lille, when a frail young woman, who was visibly exhausted by repeated hospitalisation, told me the novel had given her the crazy, insane hope that in spite of her illness, in spite of what had happened and was irreparable, in spite of what she had inflicted upon her children, that they might, just maybe, be able to love her . . .

And there was another time, one Sunday morning in Paris, when a troubled man had talked to me about mental-health issues – of how others looked at him (at them, all the people who cause such fear that they’re all 12

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lumped together: the bipolar, schizophrenics, depressives, labelled like shrink-wrapped chickens according to the current trends and the magazine cover stories) – and talked to me about Lucile, my invulnerable heroine who redeemed them all.

And on other occasions, in Strasbourg, Nantes, Montpellier, there were sometimes people I wanted to hug.

Gradually, I established a sort of imperceptible rampart, a cordon sanitaire that enabled me to go on, to be present, but at a safe distance. I developed a movement of the diaphragm that blocked the air at my breastbone to make a tiny cushion, an invisible airbag so that I could then gradually breathe out through my mouth once the danger had passed. That way I could listen, speak, understand what was being created around the book, the to and fro between reader and text, as the book almost always sent the reader back – why, I cannot explain – to his or her own story. The book was a sort of mirror, whose depth of field and contours no longer belonged to me.

But I knew that some day it would all catch up with me – the number, the sheer number of readers, of comments, invitations, the number of bookshops visited and hours spent on intercity trains – and that then something would give under the weight of my doubts and contradictions. I knew there would come a day when I would 13

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not be able to extricate myself, and there would have to be a thorough stocktaking, if not a settling of the score.

That Saturday at the Book Fair, I had signed without a break. People had come to talk to me and I was having trouble finding the words to thank them, answer their questions, meet their expectations. I could hear my voice trembling. I was having trouble breathing. The airbag was no longer working; I couldn’t face up to things. I’d become permeable. Vulnerable.

Around 6 p.m. the queue was closed off with a stretch barrier between two posts to deter latecomers, obliging them to turn around. Nearby, I could hear the staff on the stand explaining that I was about to stop: ‘She has to go. She’s stopping. We’re sorry, she’s leaving.’

When I’d finished signing for the people who’d been designated as last in the queue, I hung around for a few minutes talking to my editor and the sales director. I thought about my route to the station. I felt exhausted.

I could have lain down on the carpet and stayed there.

We were on the stand and I’d turned my back on the Book Fair aisles and the little table where I’d been sitting until a few minutes earlier. A woman came up behind us and asked me if I could sign her copy. I heard myself say no, just like that, without hesitation. I think I told her that if I signed her book, more people would get in line, expecting me to start again and a new queue would inevitably begin to form.

I could tell from her eyes that she didn’t get it, that she couldn’t understand. There was no one else around; 14

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the unlucky latecomers had drifted off; everything seemed calm and peaceful. I could tell from her eyes that she was thinking: who does this bitch think she is?

What difference do a couple of extra books make? And isn’t that exactly why you’re here? To sell books and sign them? So what have you got to complain about . . .

I couldn’t say: Madam, I’m sorry, I can’t do any more.

I’m tired, I’m not up to it. Simple as that. I know that others can last for hours without eating or drinking until they’ve made sure everybody is satisfied. They’re real troupers, genuine athletes, but I can’t; not today. I can’t even write my name any more. My name’s a fake, a hoax. Believe me, my name on this book has no more value than if pigeon shit had happened to land on the title page.

I couldn’t say: If I write a dedication on your book, madam, I’ll split in two, that’s exactly what will happen.

I warn you, back off, keep a safe distance. The tiny thread that’s keeping the two halves of my self together will break and I’ll start to cry and maybe even scream, and that could get very embarrassing for all of us.

I left the Book Fair, ignoring the remorse that was already flooding through me.

I caught the metro at Porte de Versailles. The carriage was packed, but I managed to find a seat even so. With my nose against the window, I began rerunning the scene; it played out in my head once and then again.

I’d refused to sign the woman’s book even though I was 15

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standing there talking. I couldn’t get over it. I felt guilty, ridiculous, ashamed.

I’m writing about this scene now, and all its exhaustion and excess, because I’m almost certain that if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have met L. L. wouldn’t have found in me something that was so fragile, so shifting, so liable to crumble.

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