CHAPTER 37
We were staying, of course, in Thierry’s hotel, and this time it was as proper guests, as we had our earnings now. I did realise that our bills were not as they would have been for the other guests, but then I felt we were more friends than customers. So typical; we ate that first evening on the terrace, looking at the sea, with lemon candles burning to keep the other insects away as the cigalles chanted in the branches around us, and Maman, she could not keep away from the kitchen.

CHAPTER 5
I looked up from the boys, and realised Terry had disappeared. Karen caught my eye and nodded towards the exit, and I walked out into the cooler air just as some other reedly-deedly thing started up. It took me a while to find him, as he was tucked behind a small extension to the front bar, sitting on a picnic table. He was crying; his tears reflecting the streetlights on the road by the pub.

“Terry pal, you all right?”

CHAPTER 32
“The wedding, Sophie, your mother and…father?”

It was said so deliberately, such a pause between the words, that to misunderstand her meaning was impossible. Once more, shame took me. All of my life was fraud, lies. Slowly, though, I began to realise that her voice was so soft, so different to the hard face that had met Maman and me on out first visit.

CHAPTER 30
I did not return home that Christmas but stayed with Roser. I had called her shortly after I arrived at Perpignan, and she insisted on being driven by her son out to where I had been given a room, to make sure I was comfortable and safe, in her words.

“Ah, girl, this is no kitchen for one with a mother like yours! You need…what is distressing you?”

CHAPTER 4
I get lost with police ranks above Inspector, and the man we eventually went to see was a Superintendent. I sat outside with Den for a while as John was put through the mill. The Sergeant seemed keen to talk.

“So you knew him at school? Small world”

“I didn’t know him at school, that’s just the point, aye? I knew his fists and feet, like, but then I sort of knew a lot of lads’ extremities, if you see what I mean”

CHAPTER 28
That was another start to my life. I seemed to be enjoying a series of births, as woman, as daughter to my mother, as sister to my dear brother, as lover to Benny…as daughter to my Papa. He held me for a moment longer.

“Your sister must not know of this, not yet”

CHAPTER 3
A month later and John’s interview was weighing on his mind, and Alec was leaving mine well alone.

“I am worse than bloody Sally, Jill. She always gets close to her patients, and she’s got me doing it now. No, that’s unfair. Blame where blame is due: it’s your fault”

“You make it sound like a failing, Alec. Nothing to do with my amazing charm?”

CHAPTER 26
We were four again, on the bus, until the boys mounted a few stops later. Margot seemed slimmer, and she had bronzed almost as much as I had. Elle was simply Elle.

“How was the far South, Sophie?”

“Wonderful, Elle! The beaches, the swimming, the food, the people, it was all wonderful!”

She grinned in her way. “Did you meet anyone?”

“Oh yes! Roser, she is a lovely old lady–“

“No, you silly one! Boys! Boys in little costumes for swimming! No need to check their shoes!”

CHAPTER 25
Eighteen years? That meant my mother was an adulteress, for that was surely before my birth, and the sperm donor was still there, still living in our home.

“And the sperm donor, did he know?”

“My darling, you really must try to find another word for that man”

“I will not call him papa, or even father”

CHAPTER 23
It was hot, but there was a breeze from the sea. Later in the holiday I would experience what the wind could do, as the sand blew across in long plumes and rasped against the skin and stung the eyes, but for now it was just enough to ease the power of the sun. The beach seemed to go on for ever, great mountains bulky to my right, but it was the sea that drew my eyes.

CHAPTER 2
The evening finished with my pudding, of course, which brought giggles and snorts. Each bowl bore two pear halves, round side up, filled with the raspberry and ice cream mix, and perched on top of each upturned bit of roundness was half a grape, the whole slathered in chocolate sauce. I feigned puzzlement at the laughter.

CHAPTER 1
“Jill, you up yet? Busy day today, get that arse out of the bed!”

“Such sweetness in the morning!”

I buried my head back in the pillow, and noticed the marks. I really, really had to get used to cleaning my face before bed. I didn’t use much, just a bit of stuff round the eyes, mostly, but I could just about guarantee that I would be seeing a raccoon in the mirror.

CHAPTER 19
“Why the tears, Maman?”

She held me tighter, but turned her head away. “It is as I said to you the other day. I mourn my son”

I went to pull away, to make room to apologise, but she pulled me back, her head now on my breast.

CHAPTER 18
In the end, it was the cinema, and it was a film for the boys as well as for us girls, ‘A Long Betrothal Sunday’ with Audrey Tautou. It was supposed to be a love story, and it was, but it was also a war film, and much of that part was something I found very hard to watch.

CHAPTER 17
“Maman…”

“Yes, my sweet?”

“There is...at school, there is a boy…”

“Ah. I had hoped…but, alas, that day had to come. Does he know?”

“About my state? No, I think not”

“No, silly girl, does he know that you are looking at him?”

CHAPTER 60.
And so it went. I got up, I shaved as well as I could, Larinda did what she could to make the best of my face, I went to work, I got abused or not as the day passed, and a few kids would point in the street. There seemed to be some sort of armed truce in the office, where I had some true friends that I had always recognised as such, and to my gratified surprise quite a few more that I hadn’t spotted.

CHAPTER 16
“Maman! What am I to wear today? Can I not wear the same dress as yesterday? Elle has not seen it!”

My mother’s voice came up the stairs. “Margot has”

“Yes, but she will not---oh, my mother! You have, have you not?”

“I have done what, my sweet?”

“Asked them both back for the evening!”

She sat on the steps just upstream of the bridge. Two hours now, as the Ouse roiled and surged round the old stone and debris span in the eddies. Soon, perhaps, the flood markers in the pub downstream would need another notch, and the gardens to her right would be submerged. Winter rains, winter floods, who gave a shit, really? All part of a world she had tried to engage with, that had spurned every attempt she had made to join. The light was fading slowly on a miserably grey and washed out February afternoon, and as it went, so would she. There was only so much strength given to a person, she thought, and when that was gone, so were they.