The Quiet Tenant

by Clémence Michallon

But now comes the part that will ruin you forever. This is the part you can only experience from outside your body. This is when you shut down all the places in you that feel pain, sadness, anything.

All the parts that deal with "Rachel"'s abduction of Cecilia were gut-wrenching for me to write. It felt like this was an act that would go against all of her instincts, and it also went against mine, as a writer. I do not enjoy putting violence against girls and women on the page. I also felt that, depending on how this moment played out, there was a risk that "Rachel" would lose the reader. This is the part in the book when she is the most openly inflicting something—trauma, pain—on someone. And that someone happens to be one of the most vulnerable characters in the story. All of "Rachel"'s misgivings on the page, and her earlier decision not to load the gun—it was the only way I could write this passage.