The Red Notebook

He looked down at the figures in the square below, preceded at that hour by enormously elongated shadows. Some were moving slowly, others trotting briskly like ants-surely towards a meeting which they must not be late for. The air was burning his skin, the tower blocks bright in the sun and sharp like quartz rising from the earth. He lowered his head towards the 140 metres of emptiness. He thought it would only take a few seconds. His colleagues would be stupefied; some would drop their coffee cups, others would open their mouths wide without emitting any sound. He would leave behind the young woman he had just met, Claire; she would remake her life with someone better than him. Many years later she would remember that sad relationship she had started with the boy who had killed himself without leaving a letter of explanation.

An existence devoted to reading would have been his ultimate fulfilment, but it had not been given to him. He would have had to choose that path much earlier, to have known what he wanted to do straight after the baccalauréat. To have had a life plan.

Laurent had let himself be drawn into studying law, which had led to the bank. At first it had been interesting to be recognised as a promising young banker, to climb the hierarchy, to have responsibilities and to earn a lot of money. Up until the day he had started to feel, dimly at first, then more and more clearly, that the man he had become was the absolute opposite of what he really was. Although the dichotomy weighed heavily on him, for a while the money he was earning was compensation enough, but then it could no longer make up for it. The gap between his ideal and his reality was too great. The weight turned into an anguish which was succeeded by the intolerable idea that he was wasting his life-or even that he had already wasted it. Laurent backed away from the railing then turned towards his colleagues. He contemplated them, aware that something momentous had just taken place: he had coldly considered climbing over the railing of an office block at La Défense.