Marie and Sylvie, two teenage girls, have a summer job in a boarding house in La Rochelle.  They have their age in common, and the fact that they want to get out of the poverty of their homes, but that is all.  Marie squints and is coarse in features and silhouette.  She's humble and reserved, straightforward but with a touch of envy.  Her feelings towards Sylvie are are a mix of friendship and disdain.  Sylvie is very pleasant to look at, and she uses her beauty to her own advantage.  Demanding and selfish she takes, consumes, what she believes is rightfully hers.  Marie's friendship is part of this, yet neither can be without the other, though they both have a hard time admitting it.

In the boarding house Sylvie's provocative attitude causes the suicide of Louis, a young mentally limited employee.  Her boss, the obnoxious Mr. Clément wants to use this to his advantage, but in the end it's Sylvie who uses him.

When the summer is on its end the two girls decide to not go home, but go to Paris in stead, and stand on their own two legs.  Both find a job, Silvie via a man she met in La Rochelle, Marie by looking on her own.  Sylvie is out of a job as soon as the man's wife finds out she's there, and from then on she searches and hops from short job to short job.  After a while Marie starts dating one of the customers of the restaurant where she works.  That ends, together with her friendship with Sylvie, when she suspects Sylvie is seeing the man behind her back.  Deeply hurt she leaves the flat the two girls lived in together the same evening.

More than two decades later the two women bump into each other in Paris.  This time it is Sylvie who needs Marie.  Through affairs Sylvie managed to work herself up the ladder, and now that the man she currently has a relationship with has had a stroke she asks Marie to take care of the man during his final days, and spy on the family for her.  The man's will is very advantageous to Sylvie, and she fears some manoevres from his wealthy family to prevent her inheriting his fortune.  Once again Marie does as Sylvie proposes.

Not much happens in this short story - 180 pages in my translations - and that leaves much time to explore the two women and their relationship.  Yes, this is Georges Simenon, but no, this is not a Maigret story.  The plot itself is simple, the interaction between the two women isn't.  On first sight they have nothing in common, and neither has a reason for clinging on the other.  Yet the cold consuming Sylvie needs someone to give her some unconditional love, since her romantic relationships seem like physical two-way consumptions.  The self-effacing Marie feels only good in a serving role - and both hate each other for filling that gap in each other's life.

Simenon is not the author that uses Deep Literary windings, but very accessible language in stead, and that is what makes this character exploration so interesting.  Don't expect much of a plot or much action, do expect an interesting portrait of two women whose destiny is too intertwined to live without each other.