CHAPTER 42
I remembered my behaviour the last time, that time Benny had departed, and with those memories came certainty. I was not alone; Rollo, Margot, even my parents in the deep South, they were not lost to me, nor me to them. There were Matty and Elle, and sweet Pascale. I astonished myself, because I did not go indoors to weep over the destruction but instead rang my brother.

“Whore of a brothel of shit! Stay there, do not touch, do not clean. I will call friends. Telephone your friend, that Elle, have her come if she can”

Elle was at the house, no longer my sunflower place, as quickly as she could squeeze my god-daughter into a basket, and once more I saw a face working against its emotions. My tiny and first friend, she is not stupid, and to my delight…No. Not delight. There is perhaps a word, it may be ‘satisfaction’, or perhaps ‘determination’, but whatever that word is, it was in my heart as she produced a camera with a computer louse to store the images. A half hour after she was finished, and drinking coffee in my kitchen, Marck-with-the-wall-eye was there.

I remembered him from the awful times when I was someone foreign to me, and I knew that he was the one who had seen me, that dreadful day of despair on the bridge, wondering how long the air would bear my weight because I could no longer do so. There was a sharp appraisal in his eye, and a smile, and then an embrace.

“Sophie, it is, no? This woman, she…?”

“Marck, this is my first and best friend, and, yes, she knows all. Elle, this is Marck, who worked with my brother before he moved to the job he does now”

Marck grinned. “And he is a lucky son of a whore…sorry. I mean he is fortunate in his new post. The airport, no?”

Elle laughed. “Do not let his wife hear that!”

He shrugged. “Indeed. What a waste of a post. A man so in love, with such a beautiful and charming lady, and he is delivered to a place with more hot rabbits than the cliffs at Arromanches! Now, Sophie, I can talk before your friend? Candidly?”

“Absolutely”

“Rollo, he told me, that he had told you, yes? When I saw you, on the bridge?”

I nodded. The memory was clear; I had not seen him, as my eyes had found the drop and measured each centimetre, planned, hesitated, longed for an end to it all.

He sighed, and looked at the coffee on the hot plate. I apologised, and poured.

“Sophie, you are of a kind I have not met before. This is strange to me, but as I talk to you, I see how you fit your life. This is right. I remember the little football I watched from a distance, those pieces of shit…”

He sipped, and looked up in two directions. “Yes, I did speak with them, but I could not be there every day. I promised your brother I would do my best but, alas, the chief, he has other ideas, no? Tell me, this is the same piece of cu–sorry, the child. I forget, sometimes. Our job is not a soft one. You think this is the same…people you have met before?”

I explained about little Tiffanie and the letters to the school, and he nodded. “The hole in the arse is still in the cell, but he knows who to call, who to, what is the word, SUBCONTRACT his poison to. Look…”

He set down his cup. “Sophie, for your brother, yes, but also for you. Roland has…Roland has been more than a friend to me, more than a colleague. There are things we share, things he has done for me that I cannot repay him for. Here is my plan. That camera, Elle, you have the pictures? Let me see”

He looked through them, and then took us to the garden where he took more. “The louse, may I take it?”

She nodded. “It is a new one, so all is what you have seen”

“Good. I will keep this safe. I will be away now. Thank you for the coffee; I have a prisoner to visit”

I do not know what he said to my tormenter, or perhaps what he did, but there were no more signs painted on my door, and the flowers grew in my garden without interference. That was the difference, I knew, and absolutely. The old Sophie had folded like wet card beneath the travails that had struck her. This woman, this adult, proud, WOMAN, knew where her friends and her family lived and that they lived for her. I explained it to Pascale, and she simply smiled and embraced me.

Christmas was the delight I had become accustomed to, but this time I was the host. My parents were there, my grandmother and---what exactly was Jaume? Uncle? Friend? No matter, whatever he was called, the word was ‘welcome’, or perhaps ‘loved’. All I had thought as I saw my sunflowers laid low was true. Family. Friends. Love. I found myself fitting the words of Pascale to a silly tune, singing them in my head: they can go and bugger themselves up their own arsehole. My old shoes came out, and there were gifts in them, but the Father Christmas came in reality for a little girl who held my name in trust for the future. Marck came to see us one afternoon in the holiday, and I made him sit down and accept a bottle of good calvados as my sign that I knew he was ours, friend, family.

And again the cold weeks until the Spring arrived, and with it a basket delivered to my house of meats and saucisson, and a note from a boy’s father so full of pride I must cry with joy, and I shared the news with Pascale, and all she would say was that she already knew what I was: I simply needed to open my eyes. Two years, two boys who the system had written off as unworthy, two men who had earned respect. How could anyone gain a greater reward for their work?

I was sailing through the year like a Marie Galante, the wind behind me, singing as I flew across the waters, until some time in March, and that was the news from Pascale that the complaints had returned, grown wider.

“Sophie, it is hard to explain this without it sounding stupid. The parents, those ones, yes? Gaston, his success, it is because you…”

There was a pause as she looked at all of the world except me. “His father, he has said they speak rubbish. The others, they claim you must have corrupted him, seduced him. And the school…”

Her mouth tightened. “The school, they say there must be no adverse publicity, and they talk about limiting damages, and I say, bugger your damages up their own arsehole. And they say, they say I am not being helpful”

More of the movement of her face, as if she chewed upon something that fought against her.

“Sophie, I have other places. I work here because I can touch so many children, help so many, but if the direction, if they are so timid, then I cannot bear their small minds. Here is my offer. I ask nothing from you; I merely lay this before you. I will return to the University, concentrate my forces on the older students, and you will come with me to earn your certificates. This is your choice, yours alone”

What else could I do but embrace her? That was the end of Mlle Laplace, and the beginning of Sophie, the tutor. It was not like the days and weeks with the Open, because the new people were so much younger, but I had to laugh. They obviously sought sexual congress as actively as the Open students, but I truly doubted that their results matched their efforts.

I missed my children. I had spoken with the authorities as I left the school, but they had been as Pascale had said to me, so frightened of a scandal for the parents that they had thrown us away. I did not care if the schools lost their rate of success at the academical, but I sighed with loss over young Georges.

My new world. I rode each day on my little blue steed, trying to ignore the fact that the motor made the saddle vibrate in a manner that…well, it was very nice, but the circulation, the traffic, was so busy I needed to think hard. I took my adults, as they were deemed, and I did what my soul told me I must, and Marck taught his own lessons to those who needed to learn