CHAPTER 3
That was the day our lives changed. The payout from the lottery came to €82,136, and it seemed that Roland’s new boss knew a man, who knew a man, who had a wife, and that wife had a house she had inherited from an uncle, and…

It was a house with three bedrooms, which was one more than we had ever had before, on the Rue Saint Vigor in Colleville Montgomery, a little way inland from Ouistreham. It meant that Roland could drive or ride to work in a reasonable time, and I could have my own space at last. After some negotiation, we moved in at the end of June, just in time for the start of the summer holidays. Maman had been busy as well, and she came home smiling just before the move.

“We are going to be July people, not August ones, and I have taken my summer holiday time as my notice to quit”

“No more work?”

“Do not be silly, little one. That money is not a bottomless purse, it was just our chance to sort our debts and start afresh. No, my boss has a friend, and he has a restaurant in the port, and they need a sous-chef, and…I start in August!”

“But, surely, it will be dead then? All flown south?”

“There are always the English, my sweet. I will be cooking…simpler fare for them, but will still be busy. Now, we have been looking around for you, and we think we have the place for September. There is a college in Ouistreham, the Jean Monnet, and I have asked, done some research. Come and sit with me, my dear”

I sat at the chipped folding table, and she took my hands in hers. “You are set on this course?”

“I have no choice, Maman. It is what I am, no more, no less; I cannot be other than myself, or, well, there is no ‘or’ that I could accept. It is me, who I am”

“Then we need to ensure you are to achieve that, yes? You are sixteen…there are things we can do, but this Summer, next term, you would be Sophie?”

“Maman, I AM Sophie. Not Serge, not Sacha, I never was a prince; that is Rollo’s job, the warrior, the defender”

She looked down. “You know this will be hard, yes? Harder than anything you have ever done?”

“Harder than being used as a football?”

“That may still happen, you know that. You will never be small, my sweet, never delicate. I have read the books, the articles. Even with the hormones they can give, you will still not be as…other girls. See, listen to me? I was going to say ‘normal’ girls, but that would be cruel. I cannot see you, Sophie! I have too many years of my son in my eyes to see a daughter so soon”

What secrets could I possibly have left? “Wait a moment or two, please. I have something…a moment, only”

I ran to my room, our room, my brother’s and mine, and removed the bottom drawer from our chest. That was my hiding place, the things I had made from the sewing patterns that were in the magazines Maman had recycled from customers at the places she had cleaned. The dress I had found stained and abandoned by the roadside, torn at the zip, the one I had surreptitiously laundered till it was as clean as I could make it, and then repaired. Naturally, I had no shoes. I slipped into my favourite, the abandoned tissue of blue and gold, skirt to an inch above my knees, and returned to the dining area. She gasped.

“This is me, Maman. This is as real as I have been able to make myself”

She winced. “And I have to be honest, Sophie. You are a big girl in the wrong ways. This will be hard for you. You must decide: college as Serge, or as Sophie, and if it is that we must see a doctor quickly. The law is the law, but if you are not filed and official, then we cannot contest any problems with the school, no?”

“But, Maman, I have no doctor here to say that I am, you know, ME!”

She smiled, and it was the smile I remembered from earlier pains, from earlier sadnesses, where she cocked her head and sent me grace. “We have some money left, after the cards and the car for Roland, and if I speak to a doctor who is in private practice we can perhaps make it official enough for the State to do what it should have already done. I will look, I will speak. We merely need the door opened to us. In the meantime…”

I sat opposite her, in my ill-fitting dress, no shape. “Who have you told the college they should expect?”

She took my hands yet again. “You, my little one. I feel that if you are not set free, you will wither and die. Promise me that: a mother should go before her children, never after”

I thought of the bridge, of Franck driving past and having the good sense to speak to Rollo. How could I have thought of doing that, to my own mother? The end of pain, indeed, the end of my pain, but the start of so much more for this creature who so loved me, who felt my own wounds as hers. Not fair, never fair.

“Maman…I promise.”

“Then we need to work. The neighbours must become accustomed to my daughter, a doctor of the right sort must be found and cultivated, and you must have more than rags that you have collected from the blessed saints know where. This will take much of the money, but needs must when the devil holds the reins. I will do some small shopping, and then, when you can appear more suitable for public eyes, then we buy what you will need”

“They will know me in Caen…”

“There is a big place near Bayeux, then. Either way, we must start now what you hope to finish. These are new people, my sweet, so they must be fed slowly but simply with who you are. Serge…my son dies cleanly, and forever, or he lives on and Sophie is stillborn”

“What about Papa? What will he say?”

“He can go and bugger himself, him and that bitch. He has no say in this, and I for one will not be sending him reports. This is family: me, you, your brother. The world and everyone in it is outside the door and they can stay there. Are you frightened, little one?”

I sat up as straight as I could. “No, not at all”

Mother laughed. “My eye if you aren’t! Now, we have things to clear away, and then we are on the bus to Bayeux. How big are you around the chest?”

I laughed. “You buy my clothes, you should know!”

Her face fell. “And you know exactly how many of them were Roland’s old things. Now, your chest?”

“I suppose about eighty-five or ninety centimetres. Probably eighty-five…I have a tape, hang on”

Eighty-five it was, and she disappeared into what had once been the marital bedroom.

“Here, put this on, it should fit”

My first bra; it was a shock, and a delight, and even though it was only a loan from my mother it was special. She filled it with old tights, in which she wrapped a single small orange, for weight. My hair went into a ponytail, which flirted with my neck every time I turned my head, and in T-shirt and jeans we set off for the bus stop. It seemed Sophie was on her way at last, and once I had stopped trembling at the exposure, I started a quiet celebration inside my head.

Mother made it a proper shopping trip, in that she laid in quite a bit of food as well as what seemed like a stupid quantity of clothing, and I wondered how we were going to carry it all back to the bus stop. Maman sat us down at last for a coffee and a pastry with raspberries, and then pulled out her new mobile phone.

“Here is a tip, Sophie, for when you are a grown woman. Plan ahead. Now, look at the time: what happens in ten minutes?”

“I don’t know, Maman”

“Well, in ten minutes, my sweet, Roland finishes work. And he is in a car. And I have this handy mobile telephone. And he is a man who is aware of his duty. You, on the other hand, are in a shabby pair of jeans and scruffy basketball shoes. That is not the part a lady plays in such a scene, so take these, over there, and bring back my daughter”

Flat sandals. A yellow sundress with cap sleeves to preserve the modesty of my borrowed lingerie. I had only ever worn a skirt of any kind furtively, at home alone, and there I was in the ladies’ toilet adjusting a bra strap and shaking loose my pony tail.

Roland was on time. He said nothing, but he smiled, and he kissed my hand.