CHAPTER 46
Once more it was Marck who saved my life. Whatever debt he had ever owed my brother had been repaid in full and more given besides, it seemed, but this was not a payment I had desired. Not to wake, that had been my hope. I had managed to get the cut across the left forearm, but it was hard to use that hand on the right, and the blood made the handle slippery, twisting in my grip. I had to be satisfied with the flow from one arm, and it was painful, of course, but that was the price for my peace.

It was a strange experience, for I grew cold, as if the Winter had seized me early, and as the colour washed out of my vision I realised that I had neglected an importance: the traditional note of explanation. I half-rose from my kitchen floor, but I had not the strength, and in the end my reasons were obvious to the whole world. No further explanation, no further pain.

Unfortunately, I had made other errors, and left my little blue scooter standing on the road instead of stationed in my garage, and it was the scooter that Marck saw as he drove past, that caused him to stop, and open the door that was unlocked in my final error. Once more the ambulance made its noisy way to what was left of the sunflower house and my dreams. This time, it took me to the hospital that had brought me to the completion of my fraud, that had shaped the artificiality of what I had become. I still do not know what Benny had ever seen in me, for I had to look at myself and see the view that came to others. I was taller than most, and my form had not grown as well as I had dreamt, and my feet…I almost laughed each time I bought shoes, for Elle’s obsession did not work for me. Forgeron had been correct, and a fraud was my true state.

I had visitors, there in the hospital, and so many of them wept, especially my parents when they had flown from Perpignan. They insisted I came back with them, but I refused. I did not want the happy memories of that place to be stained with what I now knew of myself. Elle and Matty, Fatima, my sister, they tried to persuade me, but it was not to be. In the end, Pascale was there for me, and she spoke truth.

“Sophie, my sweet, this is not to be left as it is, like a sore, a boil. You must rise, move on. Otherwise, Forgeron has achieved all that he wished, and I will not see that happen”

“Forgeron was correct, Pascale. I am not real. I am but a pretender”

Her mouth tightened, and there was a tear there in her eye, though it narrowed.

“How can you say that? You, who have changed lives? You forget at least two boys who were written out of their futures, that you turned and led into success and better life? The children who are still learning, still using what you gave them? It is time that you grew up, Sophie Laplace!”

And at that her anger flew away, as her hand went to mine, the right, the unbandaged.

“My little one, my teacher born, there is a calling for you. There are students at the University who need you. I need you. Your family, you think they do not---no, be silent. I can see what is in your heart, that you are the cause of this, perhaps that you have drawn it to yourself, that you are deserving of such hatred? Sophie, my darling, that is untrue, that is never true! You must not be like the woman who is struck by her spouse, the woman who says ‘he hit me, what did I do wrong, for I must have erred in some way, or he would not have struck me’. It is circular, that thinking, it is like a snake with its head up its behind seeing nothing but its own shit!”

I looked away, trying to hold my tears. Pascale continued.

“The violence, the blows, they are only ever the fault of the hand that delivers them”

To my surprise she gave a small laugh. “No, not absolute, my sweet. Sometimes…the blows your brother gave to Forgeron, those were surely deserved by him, and in such a case I will forgive the raised hand. My God, though, your brother, he delivered some justice to that bastard! His face…name of Heaven!”

She shuddered, then collected herself.

“Here is my offer. I will assume you are not going to stay at that house, so I shall come for you when the doctors and the surgeons are happy. I shall collect you, my sweet, and I shall return you, and you will be safe. There is to be no negotiation in this matter”

She rose to go. “Oh, yes, that slut by the toilets. That was Blanchard’s niece. She was also connected to all those affixed copies of the newspaper. She is being pursued by our lawyers at the moment. Sophie, this is a big thing. They have not only harmed one of ours but they came onto our grounds to do so. The direction are taking this very seriously. Oh, and the old bitch…a small bird has whispered in my ear that her vehicle seems to be in a state of perpetual infringement of the laws relating to use on the public road. What a shame”

I had one surprise visitor in the hospital, and that was a small woman whose face I had never seen but whose voice I knew: my operator, Nadine Dubroca. She spoke to me of her own nightmare, as she listened to everything as it unfolded, and could do nothing but hope that somebody might arrive in a timely way from the great fire. I saw her later, of course, in the courtroom where three men, one in a rolling armchair, received long sentences in a prison, before more than a dozen others whose faces had been caught by Matty’s camera were sentenced to lesser terms, and ordered to compensate me for my loss and pain.

Which was, of course, impossible.

Pascale was true to her word, as ever, and my sister all but forced me physically from the house to send me on my way. My friend spoke not of the events, but little things, things that were of gossip in the university or sillinesses about people in the city. We took a morning coffee, and then she delivered me to my first class, my sleeves long over the dressings that still adorned my arms, and as she shut the classroom door the students rose as one, and applauded me.

I had to run for the WC, and there was a space of time before I could return, my face washed. Concentrate, Sophie. “The English, what did they ever do for us?”

I got my laughter, and the class was underway. That set the pattern of my days, that Pascale would collect me, I would come to life for my students, and then, like an appliance in the kitchen, I would cease to function when not needed. I rarely left the old house for anything except the most essential, but that included a day in November, the seventh, for that was when Maggie gasped.

“Oh, I am wet!”

The journey in the ambulance was so different, for this time it was Maggie who lay upon the rolling bed and I who sat beside her as we sped to the hospital, Rollo leaving work to meet us there. I left her only when the moment came, and they prepared Roland in robes and mask, gloves and a cloth hat, but I could still see his eyes shining between the covering pieces.

At five minutes after six o’clock in the evening, I had a nephew, Guillaume Roland Marck. For the first time in my life, I held my beautiful brother as he wept.

Elle, Maggie, Maman, Fatima in time, no doubt, they were real. I was not.