The Red Notebook

by Antoine Laurain

He was obviously a man waiting for his wife. It was as evident as if he had been wearing a sandwich board reading ‘My wife will be back shortly’.

He drank some more wine, feeling he was about to commit a forbidden act. A transgression. For a man should never go through a woman’s handbag – even the most remote tribe would adhere to that ancestral rule. Husbands in loincloths definitely did not have the right to go and look for a poisoned arrow or a root to eat in their wives’ rawhide bags.

Laurent hopelessly old-fashioned, still believing in the chance encounter, the smile exchanged across a café terrace, or the conversation about a book that led on to something else.

He must be slightly crazy. Or very romantic. Or have too much time on his hands. Or a bit of all three,