CHAPTER 29
I rode trembling to my own stop, my face flooded with tears, my life in broken shards at my feet. I tried to get into our house without being seen, but my mother was there, and I could do nothing but fall into her arms as she stroked and soothed and sighed. She asked a question, just one word.

“How?”

I held my sobs to myself as best as I could. “It was a boy from school, from my old school. He recognised me and called out the truth about what I am”

“I suspect that it was more of an attack than the truth, my sweet. Am I right? And what did Benoit do?”

“He hit him very hard in the face, and then he hit two of his friends the same way”

“My sweet, that does not sound like he hates you”

I could hold my sobs no longer, and it was as a wail that I gave her the words. “But he said ‘Goodbye, Serge’, Maman!”

My telephone rang, right then, and I snatched it up, but the number was Elle’s, not his, and I could not speak as she explained to me how Benny had called her Matthieu immediately, and of the disagreement she had then had with him.

“Sophie, I will not have these things said about you, not even by Matty. He will apologise, or he is no longer welcome beside me”

“But, Elle, he, you, you are in love! Not for me, no!”

Her voice was gentle. “And you say this, you who have done so much to bring life to others? Matty will see sense”

“And if he does not? What then?”

She was silent for some time. “Sophie, it is important, it is vital, no? If my Matty, if that man cannot see more than a shell, if he is not wise enough to see who you are, if he is filled with prejudice and no understanding, how could I remain in love with him? Better I learn it now, and not in ten years’ time. No, this must be done. I will see you tomorrow, and we will talk. Sleep as well as you can, my little friend”

She ended her call, and I explained what she had said to me. Maman smiled.

“That girl has wisdom beyond her years, my sweet. Now, go and wash. I will make some chocolate, and then you will sleep, and we will begin again. This arsehole, this one with the punched face, he is one of those who beat you at school?”

I gave her a yes. “Many times. Many, many times”

“Benoit has done you one service, then. Off! Night clothes and chocolate, my little girl!”

The night was long, and I was up before anyone else, making a walk to the baker for some fresh bread. Rollo was arriving as I returned, finished from his night at work, and Maman took him to one side and quickly explained. He simply came to me and embraced me. He whispered into my hair.

“There will be other boys, my sister. You are going to university in a very short time; surely things would have ended anyway, with such a distance of separation? Chut; I know what you are feeling, that he is the only one, that you will die. I was not a teenager myself? I did not think my life would end when Estelle left me, and then the next, and the next?”

He turned my face to his. “He is but the first, my sweet sister, but the first. You now know that you are not repugnant to men, no? Maman says he hit the boys”

“Yes, very hard”

“So that would suggest that he does not hate you. Perhaps…perhaps once he has thought, and realises that you are no boy, then he will return”

Just then, there was a bang at the door, and in flew Elle, her face folded in concern, and she embraced me as my brother stepped back.

“Sophie, I spoke to Matty, as soon as I was awake, and, well, I told him that he was not free to make choices against you, for if he did then he would be free of me. He is outside, if you would speak with him”

I looked over at Maman, at Rollo, and both nodded. Maman began setting places at the table.

“Héloise, have you taken breakfast? And Matthieu?”

Elle looked down, and I realised she was blushing. Ah. Maman smiled gently. “You have not been home yet, no? Call him in, my little one”

The tall boy entered at Elle’s call, looking nervous, and there was a sequence of glances. Matty looked at me, and I could feel the search of his eyes for any badge of Serge that might have been visible. Rollo’s eyes followed Matty, and then Matty looked at Rollo. Things were unsaid, but understood. Matty coughed, nervously.

“Sophie…I have spoken with Benoit, and he is very unhappy. He…he says he cares for you, and that is wrong, for you are not who he thought you were, not who you told him”

The words were coming out in a rush, and Matty’s eyes were on the floor.

“He feels many things, Sophie. Oh, whore, I cannot call you Serge, you are not. And Benny says…he says he is sorry he said that to you, it was cruel, but he was angry, and…”

He paused, and looked up at me, and there was pain in his eyes. “I am sorry, Sophie, but he said many things, and they were mostly about trust and honesty, and…and that he cannot see you without thinking that you have a piece, and he cannot…”

Elle took his hand. “Sophie, Matty has done his best, and Benny, he will call. If he does not, then he is not the boy we know”

We had breakfast, almost in silence, glances passing among us, and I waited for Benny’s call. It did not come. Not in June, not in July, when I went to have my jewels removed, not in August when we travelled once more to the South and I healed on the sand and in the sun as the results of my examinations were known, not at the end of that month when my brother married his Norman blonde, not in September as I packed everything for my journey back to Perpignan.

Not at all.

That was how time seemed to pass, awaiting the call that never came as events of great significance in my life came and went. I was moving with the flow of a great river, making no effort to swim but taking my life as it was presented to me. There was a numbness to me, around me, a second skin that held me clear of the people around me. The wedding was such a happening.

I had worked as well as I could with Maman to prepare the house and my brother for that day, and yet I felt nothing. Margot was excited beyond description, but with my surgery, and my dislocation from the world, I could not feel that, nor share it. I came into the dining room once to find my brother drinking coffee, and he looked at me, and then he began to weep. Even as numb as I was, I still went to embrace him.

“Sister sweet, this should not be. We have a wedding, a time of happiness, joy. Your big brother is marrying your close friend; you should be overflowing with laughter and excitement, and yet, there is nothing”

“Rollo, you have done nothing wrong. It is just that, well, I am a little out of myself at the moment”

I spoke to Mme Chinon, some years later, and she offered me her analysis, which was a diagnosis of severe and systematic depression, but then…I am ahead of myself. The wedding was wonderful, I could see that, and Papa cried, and Maman cried, and Elle and Fatima, and in the excitement Matty asked his own question, but there was no need of a proposal from Papa. That question needed no asking. Abdullah sent the papers through the judge to the sperm donor, and then there was a surprise: he did not argue, nor demand our property be divided. We were free, free at last, and I was so, so alone.

As Rollo drove me to the train for the South, I asked him if he had visited his sperm donor again, and he looked at me and I saw the eyes that the other man must have seen when he let his urine come through his trousers and down his leg, that day by the old church in Caen, and I knew. That nearly broke my coldness, almost lost me to despair. Everything was so easy for other people. Rollo was with his wife, a true story from Hollywood or a romance novel, and Maman was to wed her own true love. Elle had Matty searching for the right ring, and one early morning or late evening knock at a door in Rouen had cleared the fears away, and yet there I sat, in a car awaiting a train, my suitcases packed, three years of university to come, and I had nothing. No lover, not a single telephone call, just my own body, one I hated. One moment, one loud mouth, and I had lost all.