The Margot Affair: A Novel

This was not the story of François Mitterrand, once president of France, and his hidden daughter, Mazarine. I knew better than to imagine the grandeur of a president. Mitterrand had split his holidays between both families, the women and children stood together at his funeral, whereas Father’s worlds existed on parallel planes, never intersecting.

On the surface, my parents seemed like opposites. She belonged, no matter the city or country she found herself in. Knowing how to properly put on makeup mattered more to her than learning how to drive. She didn’t care how others perceived her, nor did she try to please everyone around her. He was less secure, and when he felt threatened, he shut d

Her favorite was Trouble Every Day, the only horror film Claire Denis ever made, in which an American man goes to Paris with his wife for their honeymoon. But the trip has a darker purpose.

We had Madame Roullé in physics-chemistry again, who liked to return our tests in ascending order, from the worst grades to the best. Those who got lower than ten out of twenty had their tests thrown onto their desks. The others were handed theirs lovingly. It was almost impossible to get above fifteen in her class. She liked to tell us our work wa

Were we shaped by the spaces in which we existed? At home, our apartment was all boundaries: each wall encasing us without the risk of being seen, a private space when Father was there. The boundaries had been there my entire life, and I’d always respected them. Outside it was more complicated. In the past three years we’d stopped going to restaura

Madame Lapierre came from an upper-class, highly educated family. For her entire life she had lived in the sixteenth arrondissement, close to Passy, and I struggled to picture Father in those spaces. I imagined him sitting on the edge of a leather couch, or always staring out of a window, wanting to be elsewhere. I was relieved he wasn’t from Paris

She spent her childhood in Le Vésinet, a wealthy town west of Paris, the opposite of where Father was raised. Her parents had a studio nearby in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and as soon as she was old enough to leave, she moved into the studio.

I’d sit on the chair beside your bed. Sometimes you wouldn’t fall asleep for an hour or two. You would hold my hand against your cheek, and when I tried to remove it, thinking you’d fallen asleep, you’d snap your eyes open. You’d glare at me in the dark, daring me to leave. Father laughed and shook his head. Once you asked if I could cut off my han

We are like snakes, she said. Throughout our lives we shed our previous selves like old skins. We’re always changing, never the same individual. Nothing, not even a terrible thing, can fully consume us.