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.

CHAPTER 58
“What next? I suggest we prepare some sort of announcement”

I looked at him, wondering if he meant that I should make a tour of the various offices and cubicles. He was typing, though.

“I am drafting an e-mail for general distribution, and I am going to add a reminder that the Department has some very strict rules on diversity and equality, not to mention bullying. Here is my position, Mi…ss Carter. I do not like this at all. This is disruptive and abnormal, but I am as bound by the rules as any other staff member. I will not, CAN not, offer you my best wishes, but I can assure you that the niceties and the rules will be respected. Do we understand each other?”

CHAPTER 13
What can I say about that year? It was truly a rebirth, as Sophie emerged into the world almost as the Venus of Botticelli. I simply wore more clothing than the goddess in the painting.

CHAPTER 12
That term continued, and my friends became closer. The late Summer soon gave way to gales up the Manche, and the leaves span off the trees and into piles of awkward mulch on the footpaths. Serge had disappeared into a past that felt to me sometimes as if I was watching some elderly motion picture, sepia and silent. Sophie, she was here and now, and in laughing colour. My breasts, no longer ‘teats’ but true breasts, were slowly emerging from their lair in my chest. I do not mean to say that I suddenly developed attributes to match my age, but that it was no longer a case of a sensitive pair of nipples but of a true cushion forming behind them. If only one thing could withdraw from view as others appeared.

CHAPTER 54
They flew down in the end, and it was a serious crowd at the airport. Rachel and Larinda did the driving, as well as the accommodation, but in the end I had given up on the idea of having so many people around one table and booked a corner of the Dysentery, the inevitable nickname of the Dynasty Chinese restaurant. Will had called a favour in from a friend, a pretended sleepover, and would be on the train for the meal. Mats, sleeping bags, spare beds, we finally found enough nooks to fit everyone in, helped by that fact that several were sharing.

CHAPTER 10
The meal was, of course, superb, for that is where my mother keeps her strength, or at least part of it. There was also the strength she showed every day, in her love and support of her new daughter, but it was in the kitchen where she shone.

CHAPTER 9
And school days passed, until the weekend came, and each day began with the assembly of what was becoming, for me, a type of second family. We girls would meet on the bus, tease and be teased, and pass comment on everything from the colour of a teacher’s hair to the particular gifts and failings of boys.