CHAPTER 1
The punches came in hard, but it was always the kicks I feared. When they stopped the punching, it meant they would be standing up to use their feet, and that was the time I feared the real damage. I stayed tucked into a ball, but of course that just left my kidneys open to their kindness.

“Queer! Fucking arse bandit! Son of a whore!”

As I lay on the changing room floor, I caught a whisper, then a laugh.

“Daughter of a whore, yeah, better. Fuck it, JB, let’s leave this shit, I’m bored. But listen to me, Laplace…I catch you staring at my bits again, I stamp your face, got me?”

I lay there till I was sure they had gone, then started to try and put myself back together. Maman would kill me: my shirt was torn from where they had grabbed me by the collar from behind. With Dad away, there was no spare cash for this sort of thing. I would have to repair it, and that would show, and leave them with one more thing to use against me.

My lip was split again, but at least my teeth were still there. The left eye, that would be a sight in a few days, already closing as it was. I washed away as much of the blood and snot as I could and did my best with my hair. Should I cut it? It would be one less thing for them to use on me, or to use as a hold to drag me back and down, but in a way my hair was all I had of me, of myself.

And Pierre Forgeron was right. I HAD been staring at his ‘bits’, but not entirely in that way. No, not entirely…I had slipped, dropped my guard a little, and while he was rather well-hung for a fifteen-year-old, I had been dreaming of other things. Related, in a way, but so, so different. It was odd, that had been my thought, odd that I actually rather liked it on a boy, but found it absolutely disgusting between my own legs. I mean, between my own legs, it would be…if it wasn’t mine.

Stop that, Serge. That was how you slipped up earlier. Stay with the flow…two years of school, that’s all, and the little shits as well as all the not-so-little shits would be gone, and it would be university, and surely that couldn’t be like this horrible Caen shithole? That thought stunned me; if I managed to survive the next two years, managed to get the right grades in my exams, managed to get a place…if the same message was being given out by the students at university, I would probably finish what they had started, and happily so.

I made my way out of the school at the end of the last classes, and thankfully my ‘friends’ were too busy pissing about with a couple of crap mopeds to pay any attention to anything beyond the wasp in a jar sound of the engines or the Lolitas watching them at it while attempting to smoke in what they thought of as a sexy pose. All they had, all I wanted, was theirs from birth, and how they wasted it. Roll the hem of the skirt as short as you could get it. Smoke so as to look attractive (eh?) to teenaged boys. Hang around on a corner as they tried to race a piece of shit any fourteen-year-old could get to move faster. Every choice they had I dreamt of, and all of their choices seemed to be wrong ones. I saw them in my mind’s eye, in later years, fat and coughing, selling tat in the marketplace while their husbands played baby foot in the cafés. A flat in some shitty tower block in Hérouville. Pregnant again…

I blinked my tears away just in time to catch the tram, which carried me in my silence up to Maréchal Juin, where I sprinted across four lanes of traffic to the shopping centre. I had my eyes on a book, one that my French teacher had shown me, and it was there in the bookshop that catered for the University just across the road. Prévert was a poet who got right to my heart, right to my secret core, and what I was after was his “Things and Other Things”. There it was, with Others of his…no money; a shirt to fix, and things tight at home. Papa away…

Grow up, you stupid girl. Father was off screwing that drunk from the tabac; there was no way he was ever coming back, and Maman would never let him in the door if he did. Write him off, and read the book. He had caught me with one simple fragment, a graffito, as he called it: Ni Dieu, ni maá®tre, Mieux d’áªtre. Neither God nor master, Better just to Be. If only; I had no chance of Being, certainly not as I needed to, was dying to.

I walked the short distance home, and of course Maman was still at work, so I dug out her sewing kit and began the fiddly process of reattaching my shirt collar. I had lost track of time when there was a bang as my brother arrived home.

“Got a partridge, one of the Gendarmes ran it over out towards Bayeux…what the fuck are you doing, Serge? And your face? Who was it this time? Stand up…”

I stood, naked to the waist, and he walked round me, moustache bristling as he tallied the scars and bruises.

“This happens how often?”

I mumbled something meaningless.

“THIS HAPPENS HOW OFTEN?”

I caught my breath. “Most days”

His voice went very low, very soft. “I want names”

“No. They see me going to you, they make it worse. This I have to do myself”

“Then I see what I can do with the boys when school comes out. Swing past…”

I looked up at him, my bigger brother, my new flic, my policeman to worship. “It’s in school that’s the problem, Roland”

“And the teachers?”

“What they don’t see, mostly, and they are very good at not seeing”

“Whorehouse! Not even your friend, the old woman, what’s her name?”

“Madame Duchamp? No, if she saw it, it would break her heart”

He sat down, head shaking. “Sacha, make me some coffee, please, and while you are doing so tell me what is going on. Maybe, maybe if you are not looking at me, maybe you can speak more?”

I busied myself with the kettle and cafétiá¨re, a good dollop of Carte Noire to get his heart going. What could I tell him? Rather, could I tell him at all? I thought of the time a week before, when I had taken the bus to Honfleur and walked out onto the Pont de Normandie. So much simpler; a few steps, a short ride on the air, end of pain.

“Rollo…it is hard for me there”

“Because you are gay, Sacha? I know that, Maman knows that, the whole piece of shit of a school knows it, every fucker in my station knows it. This is supposed to be the twenty-first century, little one, a new millennium, not the Terror”

“But that’s it, Rollo, I am not gay. If I were, they would, there would be, you know, laws and things to cover me. I just need to survive a few years, just till they all clear off to their shitty little dead-end jobs and their ugly wives and their cirrhosis”

I turned as I said that, and handed him the coffee, reaching past him for a cup. “I’ll get the sugar”

I passed him the box of cubes, the ones I had always wanted to start collecting as a kid, the wrappers that made pictures when stacked just so, and he was staring at me, appraisingly.

“Not gay? News to the whole world, that is. They aren’t picking on you because bigger brother is a copper. That I know. That sort of shit gets very old very quickly, and usually with a lot of pain as a by-product. And if you aren’t gay, you certainly do a good act…no. Stand up, Sacha. Turn around for me...”

I did as he asked, then he handed me his jacket. “Please hang that by the door for me”

When I came back he was nodding. “No, not what I thought at all. You don’t walk gay”

“Sorry?”

“You are not camp, you don’t swish”

“Rollo, it’s not like some bloody package of merguez in the shop, no bar code on me saying ‘not gay, 50 kilos’, eh?”

He sighed, and looked at me with his head tilted. “My first boss, he said to me, Roland, he said, the trick is always to look at something, say what’s wrong with this picture. That’s proper policing, not all this shit with computers and crap like that. I am looking at you, and the more we talk, the more the picture is wrong. What is wrong with you, brother? Please…fuck, I shouldn’t tell you this, but Franck, yeah, you know the one? With the wall eye? He saw you last week”

Oh dear no. “Where was that, Rollo?”

He sighed again, head still tilted. “On that bridge, of course. If it is that bad, you have to talk to me”

“That’s Papa’s job”

“Fuck the drunken whoreson piece of cunt! It is me here, now, and he is gone and he is a father only by fucking sperm donation! What is up with you, boy?”

I could actually see the moment his mind told him the answer.

“Oh, fuck, Sacha. Am I right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do I have a bloody sister?”

CHAPTER 2
And he sat there, and sat there. Not a word, for at least five minutes, which seemed an age, and I wondered what he would do. He was my big brother, the man who took up Papa’s torch when he dropped it in the mud. He drew a long, soughing breath.

“Does anyone else know?”

“As far as I am aware, nobody. This is not a thing I shout out to the world, Rollo”

“Then you must not. Those bastards will eat you alive if they know. And you do not tell Maman, not now, not until I have time to think. Look, I had news, yes? News I will share with her, but this news, we will keep just to ourselves for now”

His voice was so much gentler than it had been, sadness leeching away anger.

“What are you going to do, brother mine?”

“Ah, little one, that I do not know, not in detail. I have read of this, we have had seminars and pamphlets on it, the whens and hows of searching a man who isn’t, or a woman who doesn’t want to be, but this, this is home, this is family…”

He sat again in silence, then shook himself.

“For now, you put away that shirt and you go and see Monsieur Vallon at the tailor’s, you know the shop. Tell him it is for me, but it is a shirt for you, yes? I will pay him next week, but you go now, and before our mother returns. Oh, and here, take this for bread”

I went to my room and pulled on a T-shirt before running down the street to the tailor shop, where M Vallon himself cast an appraising eye over me before pulling a shirt from a drawer. I had been lucky; nobody else was about, nobody from my school, so it had been safe. He stared at me for a short while, obviously unhappy about my hair.

“Tell Roland that he is not in debt to me, my friend. He will know”

Two baguettes and a pavé, that was all he wanted, and I got back just after Maman had returned. She saw my face, and there were sighs.

“Fighting again? You find the one boyish activity that does most harm, and you excel at it!”

Rollo grunted. “I think not, dear mother, I think if he excelled at it he would have less damage. What Sacha excels at is lying down while they kick him, I suspect. We need to think about moving him”

She started to undo the overall she wore for work, revealing the slightly frayed blouse I had made for her two years before, back when Papa was still notionally sitting at the same table and sharing the same bed. I would have to see about making another. Rollo held up his hands as she started to protest about costs, journey times, interrupted studies…

“Maman, I have news, good news. I am changing job”

She sat down, weary, as I began to slice the bread for our soup.

“And this is good news how exactly? That you throw away your career? What are you changing to?”

He smiled, and it was warmer. “No, Maman, not a change in that sense. I have a post with the PAF. Instead of having to walk some smelly back street in the cold and the wet, I shall be sitting in a warm booth looking at passports of boring English people. I shall be getting a leg up as well. Early, too…they like me. Sous-brigadier, Maman, which means…”

She was now awake fully. “A pay rise?”

“Not much at first, but it will go up each year, and then, you know, if they like me…”

She pulled some papers from her overall pocket. “So, perhaps, I can give these up?”

Lotto tickets. Papa had spent most of his earnings at the PMU, gambling it away in the tabac where he had met Her, as Maman referred to the woman he now lived with, the capital letter audible along with the spit and venom. Mother limited herself to a couple of weekly tickets, just on the chance…it was so much better a vice than the cigarettes she had smoked most of her life, and certainly less pungent. Roland smiled again.

“Still, you should check the numbers, just in case. One never knows”

Supper, dinner, call it what you will, was a sort of soup, sort of daube, sort of whatever she had left, thickened with cornflour and soaked up with the bread. It filled, and that was the point of it.

“Rollo?”

“Yes, brother?”

“Do they have a canteen at the port?”

“I believe so, Sacha, but I will not just be at the port. Carpiquet as well. Ah.hostesses, my life improves”

Maman smiled across the table at him. “Lechery, is it? There are seven of them, seven to collect, if the old women are to be believed in their superstitions”

Roland laughed, and made a joke about Jacobins, and the mood at the table left me feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, a little of this life might be worth the effort, and I loved them both deeply just then; one imperfect perfect moment among so much dross. I boiled the water again, for coffee, and a tisane for me, and Maman went to the television for the lottery numbers while I took the old shirt and the new thread upstairs to begin my salvage. The scream came twenty minutes later. I ran down the stairs, looking for something to use as a weapon. Was he back? Had he hit her? Where the hell was my brother? I heard sobbing in the front room, and burst in to find her wrapped in Roland’s arms, a piece of paper in her hand. His eyes were sparkling, wet with rising tears.

“Sacha…we have five numbers. Maman, sorry, she has five numbers. We did not get the last, but we have five numbers. Five. Fuck–sorry, Maman, WE HAVE FIVE NUMBERS!”

He looked round the room. “Where did you hang my jacket? Shit, no, I took it out, you got the bread, whore…”

He fumbled out his wallet, and pulled out two twenty Euro notes, all that was in there.

“Sacha, go down to the grocers, not Carrefour, you know why, just tell them it is for your brother, do not mention the win, and bring a good bottle of Calvados and some Muscadet, on the lees, not the crap stuff, and---“

He paused, and took a breath. “And when you return, you, me, Maman, we talk before we get drunk, yes?”

Once more I left the house, this time in such a state I didn’t check for others, so it was only by luck that I made the shop without problems.

“How old are you, Sacha?”

“Er, sixteen, Monsieur”

“So that would be a very heavy fine for me. How fortunate that your brother would appear to be standing outside the door looking in…for the benefit of the security tape”

That last was in a sibilant whisper, and he winked as he passed me the bottles, adding a small bar of chocolate. If he only knew…five numbers. Oh dear yes.

Luck stayed with me as I dashed back to the maisonette, and I had to bite my cheek to stop laughing as Roland apologised to Bacchus as he slipped the wine into the freezer to take the edge off its temperature. The Calva, that was cracked immediately, and I was given a well-diluted glass. Roland proposed the toast.

“To Fortune, who has finally smiled on us”

We drank, and Maman looked over her empty glass at me.

“And you…who are you, my little girl child? Who is it that I have fed and washed all these years, who could not trust her own mother with the truth?”

‘Ma petite’…there was no mistaking that one. I looked over at my brother, and he did a sort of shrug and eyebrow raise that suddenly left him looking the age I remembered, not the hard, foul-mouthed street policeman he had become.

“Rollo, we said, you know, nobody else”

“Ah, my little Alexandre, this paper, it changes everything”

I felt tears rising. “You haven’t called me that in years…”

He smiled, and the years fell away from his face. “No, the little prince, the ruler of all his cries could reach, he left with the first day in school, no? And now…now we have another to serve, not true, Maman?”

She was clearly bursting to shower me with questions, but she held it in, reined it back. “How long, Sacha? How long have you been this way?”

Rollo shook his head, and interrupted my answer before it could reach my lips. “We have the pamphlets, Maman, we have the lectures, and if this is true, if this is real, there is no start, there is no ‘how long?’, it is just, well it just IS”

He turned to me. “Not so?”

All I could do was nod, as the tears came at last, and my mother took me to her breast, as mothers do with hurting children. Rollo was continuing his musings.

“This could be a way out, dear ones. This money, for it must be at least five figures, this money can give us more. We rent a better place, we find a better school, one where my…sister, our girl here, she has a chance not to be beaten every day, we move out of this cesspit. Is that not true?”

Maman just lifted my face with a finger, and tutted at my black eye.

“So, I seem to have a new child…what is your name, my sweet one?”

“Sophie…”

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.

CHAPTER 4
In the end, the fear got to me. It had been a rush, leaving the old place with a chest, and it was a delight to be dressed so beautifully in the hypermarket, but the closer Roland’s little car got to our flat the more nervous I became, till I begged him to stop so that I could change. I was so frightened that I insisted it be done behind a hedge on a side road, and when I returned, in scruffy jeans and baskets, as Maman had described them, and flat in front, I felt as if a door was closed, slammed in my face. She saw, and had a tissue ready for my tears almost before they fell.

“If I had needed proof, Sophie, if I had ever needed your pain made clear, it is here, now. We move in a week, no? You move as yourself, you leave the flat on that last day, you ride with Roland, and you are Sophie from that moment. Is that acceptable?”

I could hardly speak, as the lovely dress–MY dress–went back into a shop bag, and my borrowed underwear joined it. One week. I had survived sixteen years of this, surely I could manage a week? The trouble was obvious: so close, I was, that I had been able not just to put a foot in the water but even to swim a short distance in the sun. Now, it was snatched away again, and I had to pull my boyhood once more around my shoulders and over my head. Rollo looked over his shoulder, and gave me one of those smiles the girls seemed to like.

The other girls seemed to like. Girl, that was me, one of them, one from a week’s time till whenever Death claimed me. How very odd to think of Death and to feel happy? I had looked him in the eye already, and seen nothing more than an easing of pain, but this, this thought, it was so different.

“Little sister, we have only a week. You have things to learn, and things to lose, and I do not just mean that boy’s clothing that you seem to have filled your drawers with for some reason. Until…my god, this is a strange thing, I am about to tell my new sister not to forget that she has breasts. Perhaps I should just go home and learn to be Polish”

Maman laughed. “That was the most peculiar way I have ever heard you say that you intend to become drunk, my son. Not tonight, eh? Let us save ourselves for our new home, and then…then we cook, and we have a proper meal, in the garden, perhaps five or six courses? I need the practice, anyway. We eat in the evening, in our new garden. Have I said that word enough times? Garden. A lawn, flowers, somewhere a girl needs to suit her pretty new dress, and we sit, and sip our wine, and watch the stars come out…”

Rollo and I laughed as one, and clearly the same thought had struck us, as he said what had leapt to my mind.

“Maman, you do know that if you plan such a thing as this, it will of course rain like a pissing cow?”

She smiled again. “Then we sit inside, and sip our wine, and watch the rain refresh our…garden!”

The day of our departure finally came, after a week that I had spent almost entirely indoors, despite the increasing warmth and lack of air. I simply could not face being Serge any more, and as I had insisted on changing clothes immediately on entry I refused to change back, which meant time indoors. I spent the time starting a diary, and piece by piece packing away my new treasures ready for the day. I also packed my old things, but where the new clothes were laid with care into a suitcase and some plastic garment bags, Serge’s worn and depressing tatters were consigned to some Carrefour bags ready for their delivery to the recycling bins behind the store. Rollo saw them lined up by my bed, and looked at me, one eyebrow raised. I nodded, and they were gone. I felt as if I had just washed away a day’s grime, cleansed myself of some horrible stain. It was done.

In the end, the old sticks and fittings of the old flat seemed as if they were out of place for our new life, and we left in a medium-sized van that my brother had hired from a company by the coast, and the moment was there. My own bra, this time, my own fresh, personal lingerie, even if it was just two oranges and some nylon. The yellow dress, fast becoming a favourite of mine and, already, the one I knew would be worn in our garden when Maman cooked for us. Some lipstick, applied by my mother; nothing too much, she said, just to make the point. I smiled at her, and we stepped out of that door for the last time.

Straight into Madame Blanchard from the grocery store on the corner.

“Holy name of God, what in hell is going on? I knew the boy was a queer, but this? This? You indulge him so?”

Maman smiled, so sweetly it could have killed a more sensitive person. “Her. I indulge her. This is my daughter Sophie. You will please be polite to her”

“That is a boy in a dress! A travesty!”

“Elodie, this is my daughter, and we are now leaving, so if the matter causes you distress then it will soon be far from your sight, and in the meantime, if it does bother you, you may please to bugger yourself up your own arsehole, you and your sister and brothers. May God go with you, Elodie. Come, Sophie. Our garden awaits us”

She led me proudly to the van, where we joined Roland on the front seat, and she suddenly grinned.

“My sweet, remind me, if I ever forget, not to buy any food from the Blanchards ever again. She may just remember this day”

We both burst into waves of laughter, the sort that peaks, and stops, and then you look at each other and it starts again, and in the end Roland just started the engine and drove us on our way, with one word muttered into the air.

“Women…”

How I loved him at that moment, how my heart burst with my joy and pride in both of them.

It took us the rest of the day to move what we had into the new house, and Roland did a couple of trips with Maman to pick up some oddments of furniture, including a garden table and chairs, and then we girls worked out where things were to go, and how, and in the end I delighted in the simple acts of hanging my new clothes in the wardrobe or laying them in drawers. My clothes, and my room, and outside was our garden. We ate pizza that evening, from a little Algerian café on the corner, and Maman added a fresh salad, which we ate on new plates, and, oh, so much was new, and clean, and fresh, and ours.

The next day we went again to the big shops, but I started the day in a skirt and all those things that went with it, and we shopped as two women do. My mother had a plan for our meal, and it would be a mix of things we bought ready-made, such as some Picardy ficelles and Sá¨te fish soup, with rouille and the other trimmings, but she insisted that the main course would be her own work, and we took home a small salmon to cook with herbs and serve with spinach and vegetables and…

Home. It was hitting me with each second we spent in the shop, or walking the aisles, or sitting in the sun with a coca while we worked out what else we might do, and all of it, ALL of it, was as me, as Sophie, and though there were one or two glances, it seemed that a dress and a mother close by made all the difference I had ever needed.

“We speak to the doctors soon, little one. I am sure you have read as much as you could find, and I have tried to match you in that. It will not be easy, we both know this: you are no longer a child, you have changed perhaps too much already for it to be…my dear one, I must say this. You will never be a Bardot, nor even a Moreau, but you will be mine, and that is all the beauty I need from you”

I was stunned. So realistic, so casual, I had to try and match her. “Not a Bruni, Maman?”

“No, and I would not wish you so. A face, that is all, a face with no body. Too starved; probably why she is with that silly midget. No, I will do my best to hurry the doctors, but we must inhabit reality. That woman yesterday was just the first, so be prepared, and the way to be prepared is to know, really know, who you are. And who you are is Sophie Laplace, daughter of Julienne, sister to Roland, and that is all the world need care about. Now, what did you think of those sandals, the ones in the blue?”

And it was good, and it didn’t rain, and we sat in our garden, at our home, and we ate camembert and teurgoule after our salmon, as the stars came out and a nightingale began a song to welcome me to the world.

CHAPTER 5
It was a good Summer, one I will always remember. It was surprising how quickly the money went, with a car for Roland, the clearance of our debts, and the new things for home and girl, but at last we were on an even footing, and with the steady wages that both adults were now bringing to our life we were as comfortable as we could ever have hoped. And Serge was gone. The first thing Maman had done was to seek out a new medical centre for us, and on the day she insisted I go with her rather than travel alone.

The bus made its way into the port against a tidal flow of cars with their drivers in the wrong seats, heading who-knew-where, and I was using them as a distraction. That bicycle: where would they ride it, and how far? That tent: how safe could one be in such a flimsy thing? Distraction, indeed, for I was in a skirt, as had become normal for me, but this time the people we were to see were official.

I wonder if there is somewhere a plan or pattern for the waiting areas in such places. I haven’t seen that many, but they have all been the same: semi-comfortable or actively uncomfortable chairs, old journals of a sort I have never seen on sale in any shop I have visited, posters advising of illnesses I had thus far been unaware of (so many of them relating to sexual activity)…I found myself giggling as a thought struck me.

“What amuses you, dear one?”

“Sorry, Maman, but I was thinking of what the Father says, about purgatory, looking around this place”

She smiled, catching my reference. “Yes, Sophie, and it may be either place that awaits us beyond that door. Let us pray for higher things, yea?”

I winced. “He may not let me?”

She turned in her seat, and took both of my hands. “Heaven or Hell indeed, my sweet, but remember that Hell for you would also be Hell for myself, and for Rollo, so we will not let that be. We are a family, are we not? Remember what Dumas wrote?”

I tried to look dismissive. “Boys’ books, no?”

She laughed. “And you never devoured them as a child? There is a lot of rubbish written about books, of how they are somehow masculine or feminine, but a good story is a good story, and that man wrote some excellent ones. And you…”

She leant closer and dropped her voice. “My little one, Serge is you and always will be. You will grow, you will be my Sophie, but all of your past lives on with her. You do not have to kill yourself, nor amputate parts of your soul, to be her, for you always were that person. I will have my child, just dressed more prettily, no?”

“Serge Laplace room 3a”

As we stood my mother was muttering to herself, and I caught only part of it, the one about the daughter of a dog that would receive a slap, but she reined in the anger and took my hand again. As we carried the little bottle I had been asked to fill. Room 3a was down a short corridor, where we waited on more oddly-built chairs until the door opened and a small elderly man exited. The doctor stood at the door for a second, holding a small bundle of papers. He looked from them to me, and back again, sighed, and then gave a fleeting smile of politeness before waving us in.

“Not the usual sort of teenaged boy problem, I see. Shall I assume this is no passing charade?”

He sat us down, bringing another chair over for Maman, made a couple of short notes, I assumed time and date, then looked up at me over half-moon glasses.

“So, let us remove the conventional opening, then. What name do you wish me to call you?”

For a second or two I couldn’t answer, but Maman patted my knee and nodded. I gathered my strength. Heaven or Hell. “Sophie…”

“Well, Sophie, welcome to our little place on the edge of the sea. I noticed from your notes that your previous experiences in the beautiful city to the South have been mostly physical injuries. Now, I will ask this only once, and you do not have to tell me, but would those injuries have been received in connection with what I now see before me?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. I was never…”

The words left me as the memories of the other doctors came back, and the few times I had been taken to the hospital directly. My mother squeezed my knee and leant forward.

“She has been beaten more times than she has told me, Doctor. I have washed her clothes, I have seen the marks of the blood she has tried to wash out, I have repaired the tears she has not managed to fix before I could see”

She looked at me, and her eyes were moist. “This has largely come about because of a torn shirt, has it not? I mean that this is now in the open, and we have a brighter future ahead. Or so we hope”

The doctor looked back at the notes and wrote something else there. “These beatings: other students?”

Maman almost snarled. “Not always. There was that drunken sot of a husband, till he went away with his whore---excuse me, Doctor. Mostly boys at her school, but often her father”

The man stared at me for a moment of silence far longer than I expected, and then in a very quiet voice asked one question.

“Your father, child: was it beatings alone?”

Maman’s eyes went wide. “Sophie, did he…? Ever?”

I knew exactly what they meant, of course, and with two pairs of eyes steady on me I answered that, no, it had only been fists, and feet, and stones, and his belt, never…that. The doctor nodded once.

“Excellent. Pardon me, but I believe you understand what I mean. Now, Sophie, I have some questions for you, personal ones, and then I must examine you. Now, it may be things that you do not wish to discuss before your mother, and I will need you to disrobe for the examination, so if you do not wish to have her present I will call for a Sister to attend us”

He turned to Maman. “She is young, and she is presenting herself to the world as female, so I would need the protection of a witness”

Maman nodded. “Do you wish me to leave, my sweet?”

“No, Maman, these are things we must share”

The doctor was shaking his head and smiling, and from him I also caught a mutter, thanking God for ‘family’. He went through a long list of questions, covering sexual activity (ha!) and drug use among many other aspects of my life, and then completed a sort of multiple choice form. Then, my skirt was removed, and all of the rest, and with gloved hands he explored the parts of me that should not have been there, and felt the knots and bumps where my ribs had been kicked, and the little ridge on my forearm where it had broken as my father had dragged me from the living room one day. He was almost like the car mechanics in comedy films, sucking his breath in every so often or tutting as he found some other old wound.

“Please dress now, and then stand on those scales…thank you”

He poked some paper strip or other into my little flask of urine, and made some more notes, then bundled everything together and clasped his hands on his desk.

“Sophie, Madame Laplace, there are things I am not qualified to diagnose or treat beyond the most basic level. Accordingly, I need to refer them to other more expert people. What I will say…what I can say is that Sophie has given me evidence in her answers of a serious level of depression, which can lead, obviously, to thoughts of self-harm. The evidence in her flesh and bone is quite shocking, and so I will say one thing that is perhaps unprofessional. I have seen people with fewer problems in their lives presented to me for certification of their death, and so I applaud your strength, young lady. You will have need of it, and of your family”

The bridge, the air beneath calling to me. My mother beside me–no, that I could never do to her, and that was a realisation that struck me with physical force. Family, the doctor had said, the duty and the love went both ways. I nodded. “I have my family, Doctor, my mother here, and my brother. I could wish for no greater love than they are showing me”

“Good, then. I will look for someone for you to speak with, so please await my letter. Oh, and on the way out, please speak to the nurse and leave some blood with her”

Maman stood. “Yes, Doctor, and please speak to your lady at the front desk and inform her of how a young girl called Sophie should be referred to, for if I tell her myself it will become a particularly direct conversation”

He grinned. “I can well imagine that, Madame!”

“Julienne, please. ‘Madame’ rather reminds me of the sot”

The doctor raised his eyebrows, and Maman smiled at him. “A mother should have the same name as her child, and he did, despite everything else, give to me my two beautiful children. I owe him that much in respect”

She gathered her handbag to her, and smiled at me. “Now, beautiful child, we shall go and see Dracula, and then it shall be ice creams by the sea and stare at the English lobsters”

CHAPTER 6
It was indeed a wonderful Summer, but it had to end with the return of the August people and the imminent opening of the new school year. Everything had changed for me, and it was a delight. Our neighbours, the new ones, had only seen me as that tall and bony girl who had moved in with her mother and the big policeman, and the local shopkeepers treated me as just one more woman doing the morning bread run.

Shaving was a particular pain, for now that my days as Serge were gone it felt profoundly wrong doing such a masculine thing. The other surprise was my wardrobe.

Before, I merely looked to wear something that was feminine. Now, I wanted to wear the RIGHT things, and many would never be right for me. I was still growing, and shoes for one were difficult to find for me. Shoes of the sort I wanted, that is; there were plenty that would have fitted, but they were on the wrong shelves in the shops. Maman did her best, and Roland even found some uniform items that were big enough, for some of his female colleagues were more frightening than the dogs he sometimes worked with. And then I met my other doctor…

How my mother had managed it in such a short time, I did not know just then, but she had, and I was properly grateful. I had a number of meetings with the sparrow-like woman, a certain Madame Chinon. Never ‘Doctor’, never, ever, ‘Martine’, but I was always ‘Sophie’ and the courtesies of that woman at the desk were not extended to me, not once. She was never friendly, but not in any way that could be felt as a form of hostility. She had a job to do, it seemed, and I was merely a component to be evaluated, processed, tested and packaged for whichever shelf she felt should hold me. Matters progressed, that was the important thing, and one day in the middle of August she just said “Bring your mother next week, Mademoiselle. I believe she is your only guardian, am I right?”

“You are correct, Madame. Can I ask why?”

“I merely wish to inform her of my diagnosis, child”

And that was that. I was on the rack for a week, then, a week of wondering which doors might remain open. Maman, on the other hand, was bubbling with real or assumed confidence, and insisted on the day before, before that day, that I should have my hair styled. I felt very, very girlish as we waited for our appointed time, until the call came, this time just our family name.

Her eyes flicked up and down my mother’s form in a cold way, and then she shrugged and sat down.

“Madame Laplace…”

“Julienne, Doctor”

“Madame Chinon, Madame Laplace. I have observed what I need to of your child’s behaviour, their expressions, their concerns, and it is now for me to inform you of my findings”

‘Their’, not ‘her’. Oh dear. She picked up quite a thick file that I realised contained the same bundle of notes that I had seen Doctor Nivelle adding to.

“She has endured rather a lot of beatings, it would appear, and one of my areas of professional concern about her presentation was what one could call the reactionary, where she may have adopted a feminine persona as a result of some form of neurosis generated from such unpleasantness. I have seen much…more interesting things happen”

‘She’! I was going to make it through the day, make it to my life, after all.

“I notice that the child has understood my use of gender. Yes, I have today signed a letter declaring my diagnosis, which you will need to copy to all interested parties. It will certainly be necessary for her new school. Madame Laplace, may I assume you did not use the same method for gaining her place there as you did for my time with her?”

Maman blushed bright crimson, and shook her head. We were very quickly out of the door, and when I asked what the problem was she just said, very sharply, “Not now” before making a transparent attempt to change the subject. It worked, of course, for what we were doing was celebrating, and so we had a pastry and a coca, on a terrace as the tourists passed, and then she sprang her surprise. A back street, a small office, the Notary Public…and then the Mairie. She had clearly prepared, with all the papers we needed to hand, and in a sudden euphoric rush I gained officially my name, and confirmation of my place in school. So many obstacles, falling away like ninepins: could it all be like this? I walked out on clouds, but my mother always knows how to catch my attention.

“Lamb mice for dinner?”

“Oh, yes please!”

“Then we need a decent red, and I want some English bread”

Ugh. “What for? OH!”

Maman’s special dessert was something she had learnt many years ago, and it was probably the one piece of English cuisine that I could ever imagine liking. She would line a bowl with the thin, limp white slices and then put in mountains of berries, all sorts of different ones, and then chill it. Turned out, one would never know it had been made from something so unpleasantly taste-free because the tartness of the berries bit through everything. Lamb mice, a good solid red wine, the red of the berries to follow some camembert or perhaps Pont l’Eváªque…

“We will need another bottle as well, my sweet. We shall be royalty this evening!”

And so, with Rollo’s return, we sat in our garden as a family, and drank kir royale, and then ate shanks of lamb cooked so the meat drew up, leaving the bones as mouse tails to the little fat bodies, and I did my own potato gratin, with puy lentils, with a bottle of Médoc, and then the cheeses, and finally the domed delight the English call Summer Pudding, even though it is nothing at all like a pudding. We talked and we laughed, and my brother even flirted a little with me, I think, for it was hardly an experience I had previously encountered. I slept that night happier than I could ever remember. All was official, now, all was Sophie.

Early the next afternoon , I called in to the Café ‘la Marie Galante’ to see Maman, as she had insisted, and she thrust a piece of paper into my hand with some Euros and all but pushed me back out of the restaurant. I was shocked, and turned to her on the pavement outside the terrace. I kept my voice down, but I am sure she felt my passion.

“You are ashamed of me? You do not wish me to be seen at your place of work?”

I was almost ready to throw something at her. After all the pain, all the hope she had kindled in me, there came this rejection. She reached out and held my forearms, her hands strong from her years of work, of cleaning, of kneading dough, and I was hardly a Hercules.

“Stop, now! Stop this! It is not you, my sweet…”

She paused, for a few seconds, and then sighed. “There is a man, a gentleman. I did not wish for you, for my child, to see me in adultery, for that is what it is, in the eyes of the church”

I nearly fell at that point. My mother, my Maman, only thirty-eight years old, left by the sperm donor to struggle with two children, even if they were already mostly grown, a woman who had managed to feed and clothe us, to keep us as safe as she could, who had opened her heart to Sophie, to me? All those years of what I now realised must have been crushing loneliness, of shame that her husband would prefer a whore of a drunk to the mother of their children, and she was ashamed? I wanted to put all of that into words, to tell her that the holy Catholic church could go and sodomise itself, but the words wouldn’t come, and so I just stepped forward to hold her.

She sagged against the breasts I didn’t really have, the plastic that Roland had searched for in some odd shop, and she sighed. “That paper, my dear one, is important. It is the prescription for the medicines you will need. The doctor has been rather efficient, so run along now to the pharmacy. Soonest started, soonest arrived, no?”

Things were coming together in my head at last. “And that doctor…he would not, by any chance, be sitting in the café as we speak?”

She blushed again, and I understood now what had generated Madame Chinon’s reserve.

“Maman, there was no need. I could have waited, I have been waiting all my life”

She pulled back to look me in the face. “I could not have done so. You were dying before my eyes. And it hasn’t been that bad”

She suddenly grinned. “No, it hasn’t been bad at all. I had almost forgotten…Now, pharmacy, and then home. There is a pile of ironing awaiting you, and I know this because I did the washing of it all!”

CHAPTER 7
September came, and the new school year was there in wait for me. I was actually impatient, because despite my most careful inspection, the drugs Maman had secured for me did not appear to be doing anything at all. What had worked, or was at least beginning to, was the careful attention she had paid to those few hairs that were starting to appear on my face.

Tweezers are painful, but I had not yet started to properly grow a beard, and I had always seen shaving as some sort of admission to masculinity. Having facial hair was one stigma of my unwanted male body; shaving it off would have been an act of acceptance. A few wisps of hair; many women of a certain age had more than that, and Mme Blanchard had a large mole on her face from which sprang three very long hairs.

The changing of my name had gone without incident, and Maman’s gentleman friend had turned out to know the Head of the new school, and words had been shared about me.

School. Not really, a college, a place for real study and not for incarceration of the unwilling. Surely there would be better, wiser people there? I stood by the bus stop on a warm morning that first day, and I was in that Summer dress we had bought together on what felt like the last day of a life, the first of another. Underwear…sandals that showed my toes, and toes that bore fresh, bright splashes of coloured varnish. A little more colour around my eyes, and the weight of books in the satchel I bore across my body, the strap angled carefully to avoid constricting my ‘breast’. I was wearing a skirt because it allowed me to cover up that little oddity down there, as I had tried all those contortions we had read of, and it just hurt too much to endure for a whole day. I was in my own little world of delight, when a small voice spoke from behind me.

“Hello, are you going to the Jean Monnet?”

I turned to see a tiny girl, clearly no child from the shape of her chest but no taller than the middle of my own.

“Yes, we have only just moved here, so this will be my first day. I call myself Sophie”

I thought of how the English say that, that their name is a particular thing, and then realised that it wasn’t just myself that called me by that name, but my family, and soon everybody that would come to know me. The girl smiled, good teeth in an olive face surrounded by shining black hair that fell below her shoulders.

“Héloise. With an ‘H’. I have seen you around, with---your brother? The policeman?”

“Yes, Roland. He is with the PAF now”

She nodded. “He works with my Papa. Do you have a boyfriend yet?”

Oh dear. Then again, what better compliment could she pay me? She saw me as a girl, clearly, and that was all I needed, all I had ever wanted since childhood, and there it was, handed to me on a late Summer morning at a provincial bus stop. I decided that even if I ended up hating this girl, I loved her at that precise moment. I still felt myself blush, however.

“Er, no, not yet. I didn’t really like the boys at my old place, they were too rough”

And vicious, and violent, and hatefilled. She was smiling, though, unlike them, who had only ever sneered.

“Plenty of time, then, for you to begin here. This is the time when boys become men, rather than children”

I laughed. “Maman says that men are children for the whole of their lives”

She laughed in return. “Yes, they are, but they can still be fun children!”

Her voice dropped. “And do things that children should not be allowed to, no?”

I had obviously never been included in the conversations that the boys of Caen would have, about girls, and women, and what the boys liked to do, or hoped to. The sole connection I had with them in those subjects was the regular and specific accusations I would receive; that I performed fellatio, or liked to be sodomised. Now, as the heat of the day slowly rose, I had a tiny, tiny girl including me in the same conversation, but from a differing viewpoint, and the realisation arose that I had never existed before now, that I had been a cipher. I had passed through the world as a ghost, as an archetype and necessary entity. Bullies need a victim, and that was me. They had never actually cared about who I was, merely what they assumed me to be. Now, finally, I was visible. I was seen, as myself. I called myself Sophie, and now so did she, and the Sophie I had always seen in myself was visible to all who had eyes.

Héloise dropped her voice even lower. “Is it true what they are saying? About…the doctor, and about your mother, and your mother and the doctor?”

She had a laugh that was full of joy, and I heard it properly the first time that day, as my second blush answered her question without the need for words.

“Shit, girl, you are like a traffic signal, and just in time for the bus, too”

The doors wheezed, and we were aboard, and of course it was necessary to take seats together as she called out to older friends and exchanged pieces of news and gossip. I was introduced around the swelling crowd, and one black girl, whose name I was given as Fatima, had an attack of giggling that she had to explain through the succeeding attack of hiccups.

“Always the same with Elle, she picks the tallest for her friends, and she looks even more like Thumbelina”

Once more, I found myself as a confidante, as she leant across the aisle of the bus and continued in a near-whisper.

“It is the same with boys, always the ones who are closer to two metres than to one and a half. I think she believes the old myth”

Stupidly, naively, I had to ask which old myth she meant. That brought a howl of laughter from the other girls, which brought home to me that we were all girls just then, no boys included in our circle. A blonde, Margot, a true Normande, had to explain.

“It is the correlation, Sophie. The bigger the feet, yes?”

I was still puzzled, and it showed, and---Elle?---sighed. “Tall boys have bigger feet, obviously”

I nodded. “Yes, of course”

“And the bigger the feet…the bigger the piece!”

The last four words were all but shouted by all the other girls as one, and to even more laughter I felt my face burning yet again. I was visible, I was being seen, at last, and what more proof did I need than to be included in a conversation about penis size? Fatima was still plotting, though.

“Elle, do not think that we haven’t seen you looking at Matthieu Gilet. What size feet does he have?”

Margot looked to left and right before whispering “I don’t know, but at least she is already at the right height for him!”

And so it went, as the bus carried us into Ouistreham, and the humour continued in an almost constant flow of vulgarity, and none of them seemed to realise that all I wanted to do, with my size 41 feet, was not just sever the connection, but sever the whole thing.

We disembarked outside the college, where a stream of other pupils was entering, and I was told when and where to meet the rest of the girls for the first break. Elle led me to the Head’s office, where I had to present my documents and receive the necessary information in return. The receptionist was almost a clone of Mme, Dr, Chinon. I handed over my identity card and she asked “Certificates?”

“They are to be sent by post”

By post, and in the name of a boy who no longer existed. She sighed and shook her head at my inefficiency. “Monsieur Montcalm wished to speak to you on arrival. Come this way”

She knocked once and then went straight in, without waiting for any response. I assumed that as she had been sitting like a vulture at her desk since the start of the day, she would know that he was alone. He turned out to be a big man, tending to fleshiness in the face, and without thinking I tried to see how big his feet were. Desist, Sophie. My pet vulture just said my full name and walked out, the door shutting behind her. He gestured to a chair, and I sat as elegantly as I could, placing my satchel on my lap. He stared at me for a minute or more of silence.

“So, you are this certain Serge Laplace I have been expecting”

Years later, I would read an English joke that said that virginity is a balloon: all it takes is one prick. That was how I felt just then, the one prick in question sitting across from me as my confidence vanished in scraps. Then he smiled.

“No, you are not what I expected. You are perhaps too tall, and your hands and your feet are a little on the large side, but no, you are no Serge. Welcome to our establishment, Mademoiselle. May I ask what is making you grin so?”

As soon as he had mentioned the size of my feet, the conversation on the bus had sprung to mind, and in my relief at his sudden switch in attitude, I was near collapse. I tried to explain, as politely as I could, but it was not a subject that was amenable to such subtlety. He just nodded.

“Sophie, you will find this a new place, a new life in ways other than the one which for you is most obvious. However, it is necessary that you remember that we are here to educate young men and women, and they remain exactly that throughout their time in our hands. We are what I think of as a starting school, and certainly not a finishing one. Here is your initial timetable, and a plan of the college. We have no compulsory programme of sports, so there will be no need for you to disrobe at any time. I will just ask that your condition remain a matter of privacy between the two of us”

He stood, to show me the door, and as he did so he made one last remark.

“Young men and women, Mademoiselle, remain just that, and their parents are ever the same. Good fortune smile on you, Sophie Laplace”

CHAPTER 8
I left his office en route to my first class, which was English. I had done as well in Caen as could be managed when trying to study as things are thrown at you from behind or as someone tries to set fire to your shirt with a cigarette lighter, but this class was to be a different experience. I knocked at the door, as I was making a belated arrival after my little meeting, and at the invitation to enter I did. The teacher was a woman of a certain age, with what could have been the widest hips I had ever seen on someone not actually obese. Grey curls above a pair of pince-nez, she smiled and her whole face fell into the wrinkles of an elderly apple.

“You must be Sophie Laplace, not so? I am Madame Calvet, and I do believe you know some of these young people already”

Margot waved from a double desk and indicated the seat vacant beside her, so I shuffled my books from my arms to the space and took the seat she indicated.

“Sophie, can you please rise? Just a social formality, but please let us know something of your life”

I stood, looking around me, and I didn’t see the hostility I would have expected in my old school. Keeping my voice low, I gave them a short life history.

“We are new here, moving from Caen. There is my mother, and my older brother Roland, he is in the PAF, so it is all very new and bright, and I like languages, and words, and art, but I am not so clever with things like mathematics. Number do not speak to me”

Mme Calvet smiled again. “If you like languages and words, I can ask for no more. Do you like your new home---ah, your smile is the answer to that one”

“Madame, we have a garden at last, and it is indeed a delight.”

“Thank you, Sophie. Now, my young ones, we are to consider the operation of the imperfect and the habitual past in English, because those strange people use them very oddly indeed…”

And so the morning went, from class to class, my books gradually mounting in number until I had some in my bag and others clutched to my chest. We seemed forever to be giggling as we moved from room to room, and it was indeed the delight I had described to Mme Calvet, being myself, being taken at face value. It was, of all people, Elle who brought me down to Earth. We were in the girls’ toilets, on my fourth day, doing what girls do. I had quickly discovered that such things did not merely consist of urination or other necessary functions, but extended to make-up maintenance and, to be plain, socialising. Even when sat on a toilet (and thank all holy things we were not obliged to use elephants’ feet; the toilets were more modern than my old school had had) the conversation and giggling would continue.

Elle and I were standing together at the mirror, applying the mascara I had begun to love because of the way it transformed my eyes, when she spoke.

“Sophie…there are no others here, so may we talk?”

“Of course, my little girl friend who isn’t my little girlfriend”

She winced, which puzzled me. “Yes, a joke can often be less funny when something hides beneath. I must be direct. What are you, my friend?”

I must explain here for those who do not speak my language, so please understand that this is important. There are nuances that arise because of its structure, and one of them is in the possessive form of the pronouns. These days, I am able to explain in clever terms how this works, how the English differ from us, as do the Germans, but it is really a simple thing. Because ‘friend’ starts with a vowel, the word for ‘my’ must end with a consonant, and so it is the same whether the friend is male or female. With the addition of the word ‘little’, one can specify the sex of the friend concerned. What Elle had said to me was chilling. ‘Mon ami’, not ‘Ma petite…’

I lowered my brush and looked at her, and there was a frown line between her brows, and I held myself for just an instant before I had to let the tears fall. She cast her eyes quickly around the room and then seized my elbow, tugging me into one of the cubicles and pushing me down onto the seat so that she could look me in the eyes. The toilet tissue served to wipe my face, as she let me weep, saying nothing, but holding my hand until I had come back to myself. I brought my breathing back to steadiness, and asked the safest question I could frame.

“What is it that you are thinking, Elle?”

She was moist in her own eyes, and she shook her head. “I do not know, Sophie, I really do not. It was just yesterday, in the sun, and I am smaller than you, and I looked up…and I do not know what you might be, but there were hairs, stubble, just here…”

She pointed to the very underside of her chin, and I felt what she meant under my own. She continued.

“I wondered, yes, what this meant, and then I looked at you more closely, and the joking on our first day, and your feet, and your hands…No! No, I am not trying to make this a joke, but I suspected, and so…”

She took my other hand in hers. “I wondered, because something like this is, you know, very interesting, very unusual, and if I was wrong, if I said things to hurt, I would not be a good friend, and I asked…”

She squeezed my hands, seeming to choose her words with as much care as she could find. “I asked a friend to ask another friend, if they had heard of a Laplace at the old school you had, and they said there had been two, and I did not ask if one was a girl, but they told me of Roland…and of Serge, and I did not say to them ‘do you not mean Sophie?’ because that told me, and…”

Her own tears began to fall then. I could not speak, but Elle managed. “And I cannot see a Serge in your eyes, only in your hands and your feet, and I believe there is only a Sophie in your heart, and I am so very, very sorry, but I just had to know”

The rest was tears.

Eventually, we were spent, and helped each other to clean up. I felt dangerously calm, the calm of the condemned on the scaffold. “What now, Elle?”

She applied her own cosmetics, as if we had not experienced the previous ten minutes, and spoke looking straight into the mirror.

“What now, my little girl friend? Now, we see how we can let Sophie live. I cannot imagine what pains you have had, but I know one thing. I am no boy, and they are strange and foreign things, much as I enjoy them. They are like horses, yes?”

Suddenly she was laughing. “But more fun to ride, no?”

Her laugh stopped abruptly as she turned to look at me. “But no, you would not know, would you? Oh, Sophie, what I meant was that while I like boys, they are beyond what I can understand, the way they think, the things they say and do, and you, you have been made to live in one for all of your life, and even the Father has not told us of a hell so awful. How are you still here?”

I sighed. “Family, Elle. My mother, my sweet brother, yes? Even when he swears and blasphemes, he still is more love in one place than I could ever hope for. Without them, well, I do not know”

She screwed her brush back together with an air of final decision. “Then we shall help them out. I shall help them out. Look, Sophie, who else knows?”

“Ah, two doctors, my mother and brother, the Head, and the Mayor’s office, and depending on who the old bitch has told, perhaps some people in Caen”

“You swear now, girl?”

I forced a grin. “For Mme Blanchard, I may make an exception”

Elle took my hands again after I had repacked my cosmetics. “Look, this is only a suggestion, and I will not do it without your agreement, but…well, my mother, she was from Paris, yes? And she…”

I was amazed. My little friend was slowly turning a rather fetching shade of pink.

“Continue, Elle”

Deep breaths. “This is my secret, yes? For nobody else? They all think she worked in a clothing shop, but she was actually…My father saw her naked before they were married”

“Pardon?”

“She was a dancer, yes? Not a whore of the street, nor a whore of the stage, just a dancer, and that meant that she didn’t wear very much for work, and my Papa sort of got an early viewing, as he says, like picking a racehorse out in the paddock, and he jokes that it was the best wager he ever made. Look. She has worked with…all sorts of people. I would like to take you home as a friend, yes? Then, if all is as we might hope, then perhaps, Maman, yes, might be able to help with…”

She tapped herself under the chin and then cast her gaze very directly and obviously further down. I couldn’t do anything else but hug her. We were very nearly late for class.

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.

That was something I was profoundly unsure about. My life had so far kept me hidden from the view of others, and I had never worked out how I felt about them. My feelings about and for girls were very clear, and that can be summed up in the words ‘other girls’. I saw them, I envied them the gifts of their birth, and to an extent I wanted to be like them. Not to wear my skirt hem level with my vulva, if I had had one, nor to do what rumour had it that several of the ‘other girls’ had done with Pierre Forgeron, but just to have the ease to make that choice and not be forced into no choice at all.

The second weekend, Rollo would be off work, and the weather looked set fair. I sounded her out on Wednesday.

“Maman…”

“Yes, my little sweet?”

“If I help on Sunday, could we eat in the garden?”

“How many?”

“I am sorry?”

“How many girls do you wish to feed?”

“How did you know?”

She turned from the sink, where she was slicing potatoes for a tartiflette, and smiled.

“I know I am but a wrinkled old lady, whose faculties fail more with each passing day, but inside this desiccated bosom still beats the heart of a young girl. Besides, my dear, you have talked of little else since that first Monday. Who would you ask? This Elle, that Margot?”

I felt myself blushing, and blamed the little pills for that. “Perhaps. I shall ask them tomorrow, and then they will have time for asking their families”

“Then I shall see about doing salmon in a crust. I haven’t cooked that for…oh, since yesterday at work. These girls, you are sure they are safe?”

I thought of Elle crying with me in the toilet. “Yes, Maman, I am sure. Thank you”

She held me at arms’ length after our embrace, and smiled fondly. “How could I not have seen you so clearly before? This is you, this is how you should always have been. Sophie…I do not miss my son. I simply realise that he was never truly there, and that brings me no sense of loss. I still have the child I bore, and…and I worry no more that I shall lose her, for surely I did when we lived in that place. Now, if we are to eat, we will need to make our rounds. That we can do tomorrow, and if it is as nice as it is today we shall treat ourselves with a new flavour of ice cream”

I broached the subject with the girls the next morning, and both of Maman’s suspects seemed enthusiastic. Fatima explained how she had to visit family that day, which would help reduce the quantity of work that my mother had in store, but I was still determined to help. Friday morning, the answers were given, and both Margot and Héloise were free to dine with us. Elle was in full flow, of course.

“Have you seen that new film, Le Diner des Cons? That is what Sophie is about, I would bet! Obviously it cannot be me that is the idiot, so it must be you, Margot!”

“You cheeky piece! Who is that does all of your mathematics homework?”

“Well clearly it cannot be myself that is the idiot because I am just so sparklingly marvellous at all times!”

“Not when you are drooling over some boy’s bottom, my dear”

“A girl needs a hobby”

So it would go each morning, and I do not remember happier times. Rollo drove us to the giant shop that Friday evening, where Maman loaded up her chariot with the best she could find of the necessary ingredients, including several blocks of chocolate for a mousse. There were also bottles of decent local cider, none of that Breton stuff, for us girls instead of wine. Mother was very insistent.

“My daughter will not squander a Sunday afternoon lying like a Pole in the sun. This will be a decent meal, eaten as a family meal should be. Now, before ice cream…”

It was shoes, in the end, that she led me to, and it was shoes different from those first sandals that I was given. As plain as black leather could ever be, but as elegant, oh yes, as elegant as a woman could ever desire. Heels of, perhaps, six or seven centimetres, no more, but they were mine. Even my mother was moved by the event, and this was noticed by the shop assistant.

“These must be your first pair of shoes for a woman, rather than for a girl, my dear”

My first shoes for a woman rather than for a boy would not have been true, but it very nearly was. She turned to Maman.

“Such a moment, Madame, when a child moves on, becomes a woman. Would you like me to wrap them, or…I can see the answer to that question in your child’s eyes”

What else could I do but wear them for the rest of the rounds? So they pinched just a little at first, and limited me in how I could walk, but they were mine, and I was happy. Rollo groaned in a theatrical way.

“Must I now have to survive shopping for clothes with two women? You must promise me to limit your shopping just to those establishments that provide husband chairs”

Maman sniffed. “You are not a husband, my son. Not unless you are better at keeping things secret than you were when you used to hide those spicy magazines under your mattress”

He almost blushed, and we made him buy the ices.

Saturday was a day of preparation, for it would be the first time the new house had received guests. Maman was insistent that everything gleamed, sparkled or sat in just the right place. I had to pay the same attention to my bedroom, for she smilingly suggested that it would be the first place my friends would wish to see.

“I have told you, my little one, this heart is still that of a girl. A mother knows these things. Now, what you must do is…”

She took my room, the one I had worked on so hard, with the vacuum cleaner and the dusting cloth, and she proceeded to make it once more untidy, but it was an artful disorder. My wardrobe was left slightly ajar, with one of my favourite dresses hanging from the top of the door. Cosmetics were carefully placed in disarray on my dressing table, and my old bear was produced, to sit to one side of my pillow. As a final touch, Maman disappeared for a few minutes downstairs, returning with a tall glass vase holding the heads of three of the sunflowers we had coaxed up the side of the house until they were taller than my brother.

I looked at the results of her work, and she was absolutely right. Who else could occupy this place but a girl?

Sunday morning came, and I showered and paid attention in tiny detail to all surfaces of my body. This would be an important day for me, for Sophie. I had tried, in some quiet moments, to order my thoughts and what I was seeking to put in place in some sensible manner was my identity. I was not Serge, but Serge was still me. I had tried to read up via the computer those subjects and articles that touched on my life, but I had been shocked almost completely away from the machine once I saw how overwhelmingly the searches produced nothing but pornographic images, and those of a type of individual I did not wish to think about. Why, I asked myself, go to all the pain and difficulty of changing one’s body and yet…keep THAT! I had eventually managed to find the right sort of words and questions to ask the machines, and began at last to learn.

That was where my confusion originated. I did not see myself as two persons, but one, a united individual who had merely changed name. Serge was me, and I was Sophie, and she was Serge. I suppose that I was lucky in that, for at no point was I being compelled to dress up as Serge had, for Maman and Roland had broken that chain. I was simply myself, form day to day and dawn to nightfall, and myself had guests to prepare for.

Elle arrived first, and under the extra sun of Summer we had been granted she wore boater’s hat in straw above a beautiful chiffon dress in a delicate rose print. Her parents had driven her to our house, and I got to see the famous beauty she had warned me of.

She was tall, and her nose was far too big, and I thought her too thin, but every movement exuded grace. ‘Papa’ was shorter, a dark man with receding hair and a scar on his chin, but it was clear from their movements how deep their bond was.

“Maman, Papa, this is Sophie. Sophie, Mme Laplace, my parents Emil and Françoise”

Maman gave the normal three kisses each, as did I , and introduced herself.

“My son Roland will be here shortly. I have sent him for the bread”

Elle’s Papa smiled. “A real family meal, eh? What time shall we collect our little jewel? And must we pay a small deposit in case she breaks too many things?”

“PAPA!” she snapped, but there were smiles there from all three. More smiles, an agreed time, and two were gone just as another arrived.

“Maman, Margot”

More bisous, and Maman sent us up to my room to leave room for her to perform her duties as goddess of the hearth and kitchen. The girls were entranced by my room, and I saw how carefully my mother had arranged things. Elle looked around almost in awe.

“Sophie, there is no way that you were ever…”

She shut her mouth abruptly, and Margot frowned. “Ever…?”

I glared at Elle, who was blushing, then turned back to Margot.

“Are you my friend?”

“Of course I am, you know it”

“Can you swear to keep a secret?”

Margot looked slightly worried at that, and then she did something that revealed to me the depth of her intellect, of her near genius.

“Oh. I see. If I am wrong, my dear friend, do not see me as being rude, no? Would I be correct if I say…you have issues with the way you were born? If I have the wrong guess, please forgive me”

I sighed, and shot another glare towards Elle. “If you have the guess I think you have, then the answer is yes. I was once called Serge. Things are changing, but my childhood will always have been the wrong one. Margot, Elle, please; this must remain for us to talk about, not others. Can you promise?”

Margot embraced me, and was joined by Elle. The taller girl just squeezed me, and then turned to our friend.

“You, I shall have to think of a suitable chastisement for. That was wrong and careless. Now, I suggest we change that dangerous subject and go and offer Mme Laplace help in arranging the table”

And so we did, and as we finished he walked in the gate, shirt open by three or four buttons, his hair in disorder from driving with the windows open, and he smiled at three girls laying out cutlery and glasses, and one of them, the tallest, turned to me and whispered.

“And he is how old?”

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.

I had explained that Margot had, by one means or another, been allowed into our circle, and instinctively Maman glared at Elle, who blushed. Margot, however, stepped forward and embraced them both.

“Mme Laplace, I have known this little one many years, and she is a true friend, has always been a faithful one to me. If I may flatter myself, I owe her the good faith to try and be the same in return, and that is also true for this girl here. I am a girl, and I know what boys are like…hold your tongue, Elle. This is no boy, and if I may speak freely, she never has been one”

She looked around us, and smiled. “We are all friends here, no? The best of friends?”

Rollo stepped forward and nearly crushed her, but not quite, and I saw her face past his shoulder. Crimson, flushed, but ecstatic. Maman waited just a few seconds for propriety, then clapped her hands.

“Our banquet will be on the table in but a few minutes. Rollo, go and wash, you do not know where this girl has been!”

As I have said, a wonderful meal, made more wonderful by the company. My family shared a few vital anecdotes of how I had suffered, how I had emerged, and then we closed those avenues as not suitable for a day in the sunshine, at table, with a breeze pushing the long branches of the willow in the corner and playing with our hair.

Rollo told stories of his new job, the silly things he found and the odd answers that the smugglers or illegal people would offer him in excuse, and we girls dutifully giggled or gasped in turn. The cider was cool, and the Muscadet that the older ones drank smelled divine. Margot told us about the horse that she loved, and Elle returned our secret with stories of her mother’s grace, as well as a few slightly shocking stories of her rather more peculiar acquaintances.

Maman in turn kept us in giggles with stories about tourists, and menus, and the odd things they asked for, particularly the Americans, who all seemed to think our cuisine consisted entirely of snails and amphibians and…

“So I have worked at the sauce, yes? I have the brochettes just so, the chicken glazed SO, a little caramelisation, and the rice, it is cooked the way I like, dry enough to fall apart into grains with the fork, yet moist enough to stay as a single shape, and the sauce, it is piquant, it is just right, and out it goes, and Henri, he comes back in and he says you will not guess, those Americans, you will not guess what they have asked for, and I say what is it, and he tells me, and it is tomato ketchup, some species of red sugary exudation of the good Lord knows what, and so we have none of this in my kitchen, why would I ever have such a thing, and so Henri, he sends his boy to the grocers’ and buys the shittiest bottle of red filth he can find, and they give it to Madame, and she pours it EVERYWHERE, for I watch, from the kitchen door, and then she puts what was once my food in her mouth and tells Henri it was trezz bonn and the boss, he sees me, and he laughs and just says ‘money in the bank, money in the bank’ “
We sat at last round the wreckage of the meal, the smell of chocolate hanging heavy and rich as Maman poured a round of coffees, and Rollo leant back in his chair, in the sunshine, another shirt button loosened, and he smiled.

“There was once, in a country not too far away, a Queen. She was a beautiful Queen, as these things must be, and she had a son, whom she called her Prince. He was said to be a good Prince…”

My mother snorted at this, and Rollo sent a smile her way, at which I felt Margot grasp my knee just below the hem of my skirt.

“Yes, a good Prince, nothing too special, but dutiful. One day, however, the Queen woke, and she had given birth to another child. This one looked out from his cradle, and he saw that he was no Prince, but a mighty Emperor, a very Alexandre and ruler of all of the world that he could find about him. His smallest cry was law, and servants, including the Prince, who was, as I have said, dutiful, hurried to answer to his every whim.

“There is another story, one with which we are all familiar, are we not, ladies? The story of the Emperor who believed, was flattered to believe, that he was a man of unparalleled grace and refinement”

Rollo leant forward to take a sip of his coffee, eyes twinkling. I glanced to Maman, and I could see a hint of a tear there, waiting in her eye to begin the fall. Rollo smiled again, and took her hand.

“That Emperor was a fool, and a dupe, and he set out in imperial procession before his court, and his subjects, in his marvellous clothes, and we all know that, in reality, he was naked, but nobody could dream that an Emperor could lack taste, miss refinement of the highest quality, and so they all applauded his magnificent raiment while pretending that they, too, were of sufficiently elevated breeding to see past the wrinkles and the dangling parts of his nakedness”

Elle snorted at that, but Margot was rapt. Rollo donated another smile to the table, and once more I could see why so many of the girls at school had worshipped him, for at that moment he shone with beauty.

“Our Emperor, though, our mighty Alexandre, was different. He wore a suit that was heavy and coarse, ugly in the extreme, he felt. As with the Emperor of the story about fairies, though, nobody else could see that fact. That Emperor wore nothing but his own skin, and it was a child, a young boy, who pointed out to the world about him that the old man was parading in his nakedness, not a shining suit of beauty and splendour. Our own Emperor…

“Our own Emperor walked each day in a suit so ill-fitting that it hurt. He was like the other character in the Tales, that mermaid who had to walk so many miles on feet that burned because she could not speak of her love, and every step our Sacha took cut his feet and his soul to ribbons. He knew that all was ugliness and illusion, but there was no child to shout out his nature to the world, or even to the Prince, nor to his beautiful Queen. But they loved him, nonetheless. They were just blind, for a while.

“One day, our Emperor had had enough of his ugliness, and he felt that things must change. He had thought of destroying his ugliness, but that would have meant his own soul being lost with the drab greyness he dwelt in, and he loved his mother the beautiful Queen too much for that, and then he was shown that there are more things that are in this world than the visible, the tangible, for his brother the Prince had finally, even in his slowness of wit, seen that the Emperor was a shell. Inside dwelt a Princess, the most beautiful the world had ever known. More elegant then the Beauty of the Woods, fairer than the one with the skin of snowy whiteness, and at that, the ugliness fell away, and she was reborn. The Emperor, the ruler of the whole world, had never existed. He had been like the raiment of that storyland ruler, seen only in the minds of the vain or the dull. And so the Princess was born to life and beauty, and the love of her family and all who saw her”

He paused, sipped, and then grinned.

“But this one, she does not disappear at midnight, no?”

I was in tears by then, along with the other girls, the other women, and Maman leant across to her son my brother, my Prince, and kissed him fully on the mouth. Margot squeezed my knee again, and whispered.

“Please, Sophie, please: tell me he is free!”

CHAPTER 11
We sat in the sun afterwards, as Rollo was delegated to attack the dishes and Maman told more stories of odd customers. Margot was a little more inquisitive once she had disappeared to control my brother’s enthusiasm with the soap.

“Sophie…you must tell me. What is that you have…?”

She cupped her own breasts, gently, not rudely.

“I have some…items, things that Rollo found for me. It is true that I am not quite, you know, but…”

“But you will, you know, snip snip?”

Young people. Always so fascinated by the odd and the unusual. I sighed.

“Yes, Margot, at some point I hope that I may be rectified, but for now I just itch”

“Pardon?”

I leant closer to my two friends. “I have been on the little pills now, the girl pills, yes? They are effective…and I may not need Rollo’s items in a year or two”

Elle perked up at that. “Ooh! Can we see?”

I made sure the others were still in the kitchen, and then leant forward to let them see down my décolletage. Moving the pad to one side, they could see my nipple. Elle giggled.

“I remember being like that! So, so sensitive all the time! There are creams, Sophie, but best to stay with really nice, soft things. And….”

Again she giggled, and Margot joined in. “Shopping! New things!”

I packed myself away and smiled at them. “I think, perhaps, I get used to being a girl for a little time before I start being silly?”

Elle slapped my arm gently. “Do not be silly now, then. You always have been a girl, it is obvious! Just like your brother, he is a man, no doubt there! Oh Margot…you blush so sweetly”

She was indeed rose-pink. “Well, he is gorgeous! That smile, how could one not love it?”

Elle nodded. “And his feet, they must be at least a 47, 49?”

We were still laughing when my family returned. Elle turned directly to my brother.

“So, Roland, we were wondering how many of the girls from the airlines you have come to know well?”

He sat for a moment, looking slightly stunned, then recovered.

“If I had known, if I could have guessed, what having a sister would mean, I may perhaps have decided to become a brother”

I looked at him. “But you already were a brother”

That smile. “No, darling sister, a Brother. In a cloister somewhere, far away from teenaged girls and giggles. My ladies, I do indeed know several of the ladies in uniform, but as I am no pilot their eyes and intentions pass me by, alas. I am but a simple son of the soil, steeped in the perfumes of the land”

Maman snorted. “Steeped in cider and calvados, more like”

That was when I had one of those moments of quiet revelation that come so rarely but wonderfully. My brother was attractive. Attractive as a young man, attractive to women and girls. He was tall and fit, and there were twinkles to his eyes and dimples to his smile, and a broad vein of humour and mischief ran through all he said. This knowledge did not awaken in me because of my companions: that was my second awakening. I did not look at them, how they reacted to him, to see what such a concept meant, but felt it emerge in my own soul.

My brother was my brother, and after that a man, at one moment in my life, and then, like a spark from the Almighty above, he was a man, and a good-looking one, with charm and grace, and I knew even more that I was female.

Eventually, the day ran its course with smiles and small cakes with coffee, and Elle’s parents were there once more. There were smiles as they saw us aligned at the table, and more smiles from Maman as she asked them to take at least a cup of coffee and a treat to amuse the palate, and no, she had plenty, just little things, nothing special, she ran them up so easily, and once more my eyes were opened. My mother had her own life, and her own pain, and now I saw her own loneliness laid bare for me.

Yes, her liaisons with the doctor had given her much of what she needed, but she had always been a bourgeoise, a housewife and mother. She wanted nothing more than the commonest rewards, the ones that had so far been so rare. A good house, well-kept, and a face for the world, the face of a good woman and a sound mother. This was her chance to lay out her credentials for inspection. Not only that, but by one of her son’s colleagues.

“Salut, Roland! You have a most charming family, and so patient!”

Rollo grinned as Maman bustled around with cups and cafetiá¨re. “Patient, Emil?”

“Patient with my little bundle of energy. Has she behaved?”

“She has been the very model of a gracious lady”

Mme Clermont, Françoise, bent down and lifted the edge of the table cloth. “You have perhaps, then, bound and gagged our real child and replaced her with some substitute?”

Elle snorted. “Maman, these cakes are far too nice, otherwise I would throw one. Sophie, they do tease me!”

Her father laughed. “Well, it is nice to finally meet the girl that she has talked of so much, even if I did have to twist your brother’s arm for more details. She is a loving creature, but perhaps she frightens others with the life in her. No, sweet one, do not pout. It is true, and we would have it no other way. Your mother and I, we have always said, life, it is to be lived, not endured, and this, now…this is what life should be, no? Pretty girls, sunshine, good food, friends”

Mme Clermont smiled. “And good-looking men, too, no? We must not be sexist. Ah! Have I touched a nerve, Margot?”

Her husband winked at her, clear to me but perhaps not to the others. “Rollo, what of the rest of your house? May I see?”

The men walked off, leaving us women alone, and ‘no, call me Françoise, and he’s Emil’ leant forward over the table.

“Margot, yes, he is, isn’t he? And you are how old?”

“Nearly seventeen”

“So, what, about seven years in difference?”

“Five” offered Maman.

“Five, then. Now, I am older than you, but younger than my beloved, and at our ages it matters little, such a gap. But at your age, it is a big thing still. I know what this is like, the sudden loss of one’s heart, but it happens, and often. Sometimes the heart returns home unasked, sometimes not. He is a handsome man, no?”

Elle giggled, and muttered something. Her mother looked down at her and sighed. “You and those big feet. It is not always so, my child”

The imp was back. “But so much fun to investigate, no?”

Once the laughter had died down, Margot asked in a faint voice whether she had really made it that obvious where her desires lay, and as one the rest of us told her yes, she had. She sighed.

“Papa must not know. He is a little protective. More so since, you know, my mother”

Tears were there, I saw, unbidden but present, and it was not until later, when she was at the toilet before departure, that Elle was able to explain about the events, the robbery, the sudden appearance of the knife. That day she had stood by her friend in the rain, as her mother had been placed into the ground. Margot’s slow thaw over the last three years.

“That is why this day was so good, Sophie. Her father let her take the bus here, and that is such a rarity. She rides with us to school and back, because that is so organised, but to go, by herself, out in the world, that is new. We will drive her home tonight, so he will be happy, but normally, no, she does not travel alone. Ah, my little girlfriend, we all have our demons, no?”

Margot was back, then, as were the men, and Elle stayed true to herself with a whisper in the girl’s ear, “No grabbing his bottom when you say goodbye, eh?”

Margot did smile then, and turned to me. “Well, that makes one thing certain: we are friends for life now”

I cocked my head. “And you know this how?”

“Well, sisters in law are usually close, no? I have made my decision, and I will not be denied. He will be mine!”

Her grin turned to a shrug. “I haven’t any idea exactly when, though. See you on the bus tomorrow?”

And they were gone. My mother stood there watching as the car drove away, then held out her arms for her children to be enfolded.

“Is this not what we wanted, my children? Is this not where we should be? Come, we shall take the last of the day’s warmth with the wine I could not offer earlier”

We sat in company till the first stars came out, our shoulders wrapped in wool. Maman was content, it seemed, with her day.

“Sophie…the tall girl, Margot? She is not a good actress, is she?”

“No, Maman, she was rather obvious. Not so, my brother?”

“Pardon? I do not follow you”

Two of us turned basilisk stares at the third. Maman’s voice was smooth velvet.

“And you, my son, you did not notice the legs that bore young Margot?”

It seems my brother can blush too. Even in the dusk I could tell.

“She is but a schoolgirl, Maman!”

“For less than two more years, my darling. Just, even if you say no, remember how easily girls may be hurt”

She looked across and took my hand. “Those two, yes? They know? I watched them about you, and there were moments, but it was curiosity, not harm, there in their faces”

“Yes, they know. Elle found out, and then she said something, and Margot heard, but she had also made a guess, and it was the right one. No, I think there is no harm there, and Elle told me a secret, too”

Roland chuckled. “About her mother? I already know that one. Emil is actually rather proud of her. If…”

He turned to me, taking my other hand. “Darling sister, this is what we were born for, no? What Maman says, we are now bourgeois, we are respectable in all things. I would share our secret with Emil, if you are agreed, for I feel that Françoise may be of help. She knows some…interesting people, and it was through them I found your…”

He waved vaguely at my chest. I nodded.

“Brother, you are reading my thoughts. This is good, this is what family should be. Perhaps now, we can look to broader horizons”

Maman squeezed my hand. “Yes, broader than a girl’s behind, anyway! Now, time to finish up, and put things away. You have school tomorrow, my sweet, and you have true friends to go with. Rollo is right: now, we make our own lives, as they should be”

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.

We shared, the girls and I. Secrets and gossip, tips and criticism, especially of Elle’s attempts to raise herself to higher things by the use of shoes. I was exasperated. Outside of school she was experimenting with ugly things, items of blocky platform and unpleasant shape, which made her walk like the monster of Baron Frankenstein. Margot, at least, tried.

“Elle, look, it is proportion. You are not a dumpling, just petite. Things must be in proportion. Look at Sophie, she has bigger feet”

“And your nose is how large?”

“Be quiet, Sophie. Elle, her shoes are in proportion, they are elegant, even if the heels are higher than mine. A shoe must flow, it must have grace and sweetness of line. Yours must therefore have lower heels, otherwise they will be of extreme silliness”

Elle pouted. “And you say this, you with the legs of a model in Milan?”

“My legs are too fat for Milan”

I snorted. “Not what Rollo thinks”

Both girls turned to me, and Fatima, who had been listening, raised her eyebrows. Elle put her chin onto one hand.

“Yes? And he says what else besides?”

I was blushing, but I had to get the gossip out. “My brother, he…he first wanted to know how old Margot was, and I think he likes her legs, but the rest of her is something he is also fond of. And that I should have kept a secret, girls, so please respect that”

Margot looked as if she was in a dream. “Rollo, he says things like that?”

I had to say something to break that spell. “Rollo, he believes that a girl in school is not something that a grown man should show any interest in. But, yes…”

Margot looked pleased and unhappy at one and the same time, and it was Elle who spoke with reason.

“Margot, my sweet one, think. Roland, he is not like the boys we know at school. He is a mature man–stop laughing, Sophie, the opinion of a sister is never that of other women. No, Margot, he is a man who will measure his choices before they are made, and that is a man worth knowing. Sophie, is he a patient brother?”

I thought back through the years, the silent reels of the Serge film playing in my mind, and it was there and it was true.

“He gets angry sometimes, Elle. He gets angry with people who do the things he thinks they should not, the violence, the dishonesty. He has nothing but patience, patience and calm, for those he loves or respects”

Elle was nodding as I spoke. “So, Margot, is this a boy to moon over and make calf’s eyes at, or is it a man that perhaps you can entice by patience and honesty, maturity and guile? Not one to trip as he walks and fall to the ground before he arrives there?”

Margot looked down her nose at Elle, and then started to laugh. Elle frowned.

“I was trying to be serious, Margot!”

“Oh, I know that, but I was just thinking that you were being very crude, and I was going to be supercilious and look down my nose at you, and then I thought, I must always look down on you even when you have the silliest shoes on!”

Some time later, when our laughter was stilled and our eyes dried, and my resolve was awakened to find some form of eye colouring that didn’t flow with my own tears, Margot became once more very serious.

“No, Elle, you are right. He is a special man, and that is true in all words. If I am to capture his heart it must be as a woman, not as a pair of too-fat legs or a silly laugh. This is not someone to undress with my imagination and dream of his piece”

“Big feet…”

“Oh do shut up!”

Elle mused for a while, and then a spark lit in her eye.

“We have a plan!”

I had been sitting like a spectator at a tennis match till then, as their sallies flew past left-right-left. I had to ask.

“This plan. What does it involve?”

“My mother, silly one! She can help both of you!”

Margot frowned slightly. “Help me in what manner?”

“Well, she is to help Sophie be a woman, why not you?”

“But Sophie–my apologies–Sophie is not like us, no? I do not need help to be, well, female”

There was exasperation in Elle’s voice then. “Silly person, Maman is not helping Sophie be a woman, but a lady! She has been a woman, or at least a girl, all of her life, and if Maman is to teach her to be more…refined, then perhaps this great blonde may learn something as a by-product”

Margot was blushing. “Sophie, I hope you know the way I meant that statement, I was not saying, you know…”

I took her hand. “No, dear one, I know. It is like…for me, it is as the woman with the strawberry mark, where the make-up must be special to let her live as an unremarkable person. Anyway, I am growing into the role more each day”

Elle’s eyes were once more alight, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “I know what she means! Sophie, we must see---please?”

And so, once more, my friends sighed with gratification as my new form became more evident with each week.

That Sunday, we had dinner guests, in Emil and Françoise, as well as their little one, and to my delight Margot stepped off the bus twenty minutes after their arrival, She hugged me, laughing.

“More and more, Papa is happy for me to go out on my own. This is your doing, Sophie! This evening, he will collect me. I will be happy to introduce you”

I gave her the three bisous required. “How is it my doing?”

“He says I have become more sensible and mature since we met, and less like…”

She pointed at Elle, and put on a parody of a man’s voice.

“…that little mad thing that leads me into foolishness and the waste of my time”

The laughter was free and easy, and we adjourned to the dining room where Maman had prepared a potage before our main dish, which was to be magret de canard.

“Sit, all. His highness is yet to arrive, but it is cold, and we shall warm ourselves with the soup and be uncivilised for this once. Emil…Roland said he would speak with you?”

The little man frowned slightly. “Yes, he said he wished to, and I felt he was about to take me into some confidence or other, but then he withdrew, and said he would make things clear today”

Elle looked at me, and I nodded. She turned to her parents. “Papa, Maman, I know what it is that Roland has to tell you. Perhaps…”

The door banged, and he was there, and I saw a shiver pass through Margot that told me instantly that this was no adolescent fantasy.

“Salut, all! I have the fresh bread”

Maman squeezed it. “Not that fresh, but adequate for soup. Wash, return cleaner, yes?”

She turned back to us as he left. “Perhaps…he is the man of the house, no? We must let him do his duty”

Rollo was back in a very short while, and made the rounds of the table with bisous and handshakes, spending perhaps a short time longer with one girl, and then he caught the looks.

“Ah. You have perhaps already broached what I was meaning to?”

Emil smiled. “Not quite. My darling daughter apparently has some idea, but your arrival was timely”

“Right. Sophie, please be so good as to serve our guests with the potage, and I shall begin”

“Not the Emperor again?”

“No, my beloved sister, simply the facts”

I moved round the table with tureen and ladle, stirring and pouring, as Maman cut the bread, and Rollo began.

“Emil, I do not remember how much I told you about my family, but when I changed my post there were a number of changes in our life”

Emil grinned. “Oh yes, that win. Not the biggest, but not to be dismissed, no?”

“Not at all, my friend, It brought us here, it bought us space, it brought us the life that my mother and sister deserved. Before then…”

He took a number of breaths. “Elle knows what pain Sophie had to bear in the city, is that not true? Yes, you nod, but perhaps you do not know how much of a hell it was. I only found out by accident. Once, from a colleague, and then, then I was made to see. Sophie…Sophie had problems when born that may only now come to be sorted and corrected”

Françoise widened her eyes. “Oh. I think I see... May I ask a question, my little one?”

“Yes, Madame”

“Françoise, please. My dear…what was your name?”

Elle gasped, and her mother simply lifted one eyebrow. “And my own life before Papa? I have not seen such things? Sophie…? Am I correct? Oh, you poor child. Elle, you were aware? Margot? Yes…darling daughter, I am proud of you”

“Serge”

I had to repeat it, louder. “Serge. That was my name. Rollo called me Sacha; it was his joke, my big brother”

Emil whispered in his wife’s ear for a moment or two, while my heart pounded. Then, a smile.

“Sophie, this potage is excellent. Did you perhaps help your mother in the preparation?”

There was duck, and a sorbet, and good cheese, and then tarte tatin. And not a word was said about Serge.

And Elle, that silly girl, she cried.

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.

My breasts grew. Very slowly, and with some discomfort, they took a shape within my blouses that pleased me, but they were still of the size of a younger girl. Unfortunately, the rest of me grew a little too. I was taller, and to my disgust and the amusement of a small friend my feet enlarged a little. My first good shoes, the heeled ones, they became too small and I had to give them away.

Françoise helped with the first problem. I had been given the shapes by Rollo, but as I grew real breasts beneath them they slowly became uncomfortable, too big to share the space in my brassiere with my growing flesh. She came to the house one day, and asked to sit with me in my bedroom.

“Please, Sophie. I am but another woman, and a mother to a daughter. This is...this is what we do. Please, may I see?”

I disrobed, and she inspected my chest closely. “Aha, these are very young, very new, but we can work, yes? The girls, when I danced, they were not all…”

She paused for a moment, clearly trying to find a word. “They were not all revealed to the world, yes, some were for the background, but they too must look endowed with charms for the customers, for the audience, the men. And so…may I have your undergarment? Now…”

She discarded the imitation breasts that had filled my support, and from her bag produced two things that looked like nothing so much as two pieces of rabbit meat, or perhaps the breasts of a chicken.

“Put on your garment, little one. Now, let me help you”

It was remarkable. She manipulated my growing breasts and the odd pieces of white meat until the bottoms of my brassiere’s cups were filled with the artificial items, and the tops with myself. As the new things pushed up, my own flesh swelled above the material, and I realised that dressed that way I could now wear upper clothing that…I blushed, and she smiled.

“Now the boys will see that you are a girl, yes?”

That broke the mood. I thought of that moment, in the garden, when I had looked at Rollo and seen no longer just a brother, but a man, and a man who was handsome and charming. I realised once more that there could never be such a man for me. The medication was helping me, but I had simply moved too far into the masculinity of my birth and of my brother.

Still, I looked down at the swell that Françoise had conjured from my flesh, and smiled. I had a dress that would be brightened by her magic.

Christmas and St Sylvestre were other moments of joy, bright jewels to hang alongside the small tree that Rollo insisted we bring into the sitting room for the season. St Nicolas had had his feast day, and so we gradually applied other, material jewels to our little pine. Roland was full of smiles.

“This will be your first Christmas, my sweet. It must be perfect, no? And then we have the new year. What may that bring, hey? If we can equal this year that passes, then we shall be fortunate indeed”

School had finished, and it was quite emotional, even Fatima making sure each of us had received a card, and the last day had brought embraces and tears, and promises to visit. Margot touched my heart at that point, handing me two cards, one for “Sophie and her family”, the other, sealed, “To Roland”. I found it hard to speak at that point, just seeing my name on the paper, at that time. I had been before Mme Chinon once more just the day before, and I really felt the old dragon had thawed in my presence. She had talked to me about my life, my school, my friends.

“This Margot, you say she is fascinated with your brother?”

“I do believe she may be in love with him, Madame”

“He is a handsome boy?”

“He is fully a man, Madame, and yes, he is handsome”

She made a note at that point, nodding as she did so.

“Boys, young lady. What are they to you?”

Some devil took my tongue just then. “I prefer men, Madame”

That was when she laughed out loud, and I wondered what she had heard in my words.

“Ah, Sophie, I had already decided what it is that you are, months ago, but forgive an old woman her small pleasures in discovering that she can still be right. That was the response of a true adolescent, a girl arriving in her womanhood. The boy with the Gauloise, the motor scooter, he is no longer of interest as you put away the things of childhood, no?”

I thought for a little while. “That boy, Madame, that boy with the Gauloise and the motor scooter, I have known him and felt his fists and feet on my body. I could not, I would not see him as being in any way a thing to desire. A man, though, is different. A man who knows what being a man should be, who can offer grace and gentleness and yet remain…remain everything I was never born to be. That is my desire, Madame”

Truly, just then, she thawed, her ice broke apart and floated away.

“Child, there is no doubt in me as to who you are. What you were born, tough luck. That we cannot address. The person you are, yes, she can be assisted. I will ask you a question now, and it is one that you should think about, but I will understand if you answer immediately. If all goes as best as it may, would you wish for surgeons to rearrange those areas of your body?”

The answer was there immediately, as she had known it would be.

“Yes, I would, and tomorrow if it were available!”

“Well, it is not. Listen well, child. I have made my diagnosis, hence your medication, but you must stay the course. There is no return from surgery, and if at some future time you decide that Serge must return, then it would be very difficult”

“But I am sure!”

Another smile, warm on her face. “Yes, child, we both know this, but the law does not, and so we must please the law before we please ourselves, no? Thank you, Sophie, for helping an old woman remember her youth”

I rose to go as she finished, and she took my hand. “And, child, please give my regards to your mother. I see clearly her love for you, and that is as it should be”

I left her rooms as happy as I could be. A wait, a birthday, and then release. Suddenly, my remark to Rollo about not-gay merguez came to mind, and I looked down to where my own little lamb sausage rested.

“Merguez, and two eggs. What a meal you shall make for me!”

The Eve of Christmas came, and for once we decided to attend the Mass, which led to a difference of opinions in our household. Maman wanted to spare our appetites for a true Christmas meal, for which she had gathered a number of rare delights including foie gras. Rollo wanted to do things as the tradition had it and gorge himself on food immediately after the Vigil.

“And who shall cook this feast, my boy? And who shall then clear it, and prepare the table once more, and cook all day after no sleep, and then serve, and clean yet again? Hmmm?”

That was the trump played to win the trick: if he wished to be a pig in the night, then he must prepare it himself, and Rollo and the kitchen had yet to be introduced in any way that was constructive.

And so, I placed my old, very special but too small heeled shoes before the fireplace, and in my neatest skirt and crispest blouse I joined my family in the car for our journey to the church. Rollo had dressed in his best uniform, cap in hand as we entered, and Maman was simple elegance in a grey dress that let me realise that the doctor did indeed have an eye for attractive ladies. I had a small beret for propriety, and Maman something a little wider and prettier.

Elle and her family were waiting outside, it seemed for us, and next to them were Margot and a tall man with red hair and a tired face. I went up to him and offered my hand.

“Monsieur Boucher, I am enchanted to meet you”

He smiled, and gave me the bisous. “On the contrary, my little one, I am pleased to meet Margot’s new friend who has made her smile, and...ah, would that be the brother? I see!”

He chuckled, but there was something behind it that spoke of pain. “My child, Margot has spoken of our loss, no?”

No, she had not. It had been Elle. “I know of the…horrible thing, M Boucher”

“Then you will know that I care for my daughter, yes? And, well, if she has to set her eyes towards a young man, then perhaps it is best that it be one who can care for her in more than the ways of the heart, no?”

Margot slapped her father’s arm. “Rollo will hear, Papa”

“Let him! If he brings smiles to my daughter’s face, along with his pretty sister, then he should know. Come, we must serve our penance before we serve our stomachs”

There was a short game of tactical positioning, but at last we ended up in our seats, and the order was Roland, Margot, her father, Maman, myself, Elle, Françoise and Emil. Prayers were spoken, hymns sung, words that may have been wise offered to us by the priest and we were finally enjoined to go in peace. There was quite a lot of conversation either side of me, spoken under the breath, and when we emerged I sensed some odd conspiracy evolving before my eyes but, and a way that paid no respect to my body, behind my back. Elle was bouncing, as was usual.

“Are you having the Wake-up? We are!”

“No, Maman has ruled with the iron rod she keeps in the kitchen. A family Christmas dinner tomorrow, and appetites must be left to prepare. See you in a couple of days? You must come, and see whatever the Father Christmas has brought for me”

“Two days, then! Bye!”

They were off, and Maman was still talking to Margot’s father while the girl stood very close to Rollo.

“The little dynamo has gone?”

“Yes, Maman. She will visit in two days, if that is all right”

She smiled. “How could such a thing not be? Now, we have a change in plans. As you are aware, there have been sad events in Margot’s family, and, well, I have been thinking, and talking with M Boucher, Guillaume, here. They have not the time or the skill for a true Christmas meal, of the sort that should be eaten on that day. I…”

She was blushing slightly. “I have more than enough for two extra places at table, and so I have asked for their kindness in sharing our little feast. Would that be acceptable, my sweet one?”

I hugged her tight, and whispered in her ear as I did so.

“Of course it would, dear Maman. And it would give Margot a chance to talk to our boy without Elle to make fun”

She kissed my cheek, and whispered back.

“Exactly!”

CHAPTER 14
My hair was in disarray, but that was to be expected, as I had slept dreadfully. Serge would not have had the problem, his hair being shorter, but a girl must proclaim her femininity to all the world, and I needed no equivalent of skinned rabbits for my head; a hairpiece, taken from another’s head, no.

My shoes! I heard myself thundering down to the lower floor, and tried to contain my excitement, for it was but seven o’clock. The tree was there, lights glowing as I threw the switch, gifts wrapped beneath it, and my old shoes…

A moment of joy came to me, just then, with the understanding that I was not only living the life I had once been too frightened to dream of, but that I was already growing too large for some of my clothes. The shoes, though, they were still pretty, but alas no longer fit for my feet. They were fit, however, for some small packages , and I wrapped my robe about me for warmth. There was fruit, and chocolates, and a small box, square within its wrapping paper.

Earrings. Perfect, crystal roses to brighten my ears and peep through my hair. There was no note beyond my name, though that was in Rollo’s hand. I wondered: who had done the choosing of them? To the kitchen, though, and the thing Maman had objected to, but on which I had insisted. This was a day without bakers, and yet a day I wanted the breakfast to be as good as I could make it. In the supermarket I had found what my mother declared to be an abomination, a half-cooked bread, and I left the oven to warm as I slipped the jewellery into its place and began the preparation of the coffee and the chocolate. In but half an hour I was inhaling the delightful perfume of fresh bread, and I spread the table with the jam and the other things.

Rollo was down first, drawn by the aroma, and properly appreciative, followed by Maman, who made some cutting remark about cheating. My brother just laughed, happily.

“It is as they say! One kitchen, two women, not a happy place”

I grinned happily, for that was my true gift that year, and Maman saw, and kissed me, and her smile was back.

“Darling daughter of mine, the smell is eroding my resistance, so we shall have a breakfast, and I shall not complain, no?”

Rollo made a face, and tapped at the breast pocket of his pyjamas as if checking some machine.

“For the benefit of the tape…”

My best Christmas morning, ever, was that one. The gifts were of no relevance compared to the mere fact of my existence, right there and at that time, with my family.

“Away with you and dress, children, we must begin the day’s work”

“What about our gifts, Maman?”

“Child, we have your friend and her father today, and he has agreed to transport their own gifts, intact, and we shall open all as friends and family should, no?”

I suddenly realised she had tears in her eyes, about to fall, and I took her in my arms and asked “Why, Maman? Why sad, now?”

She sniffed, and wiped her eyes against the sleeve of her robe. “It is just…it is just so many years we have wasted, so long we stayed in that place, and now we have at last a chance to be who we are, be a family…”

She sniffed again. “Yes, my sweet one, I am happy, I am very happy, but still, I mourn the years we have lost. I am but a foolish old woman, I know”

Rollo enveloped us both in his strong arms. “No foolishness, never, not in this woman, have I ever seen. There is love, and charm, and strength, more than her son will ever have”

He kissed her cheek. “And far more cunning, of course. Come, sister dear, before this foolish old woman gets so maudlin that she admits you were right about the bread”

He was almost quick enough to escape the slap she gave to his bottom.

Two women in the kitchen became one chief of said kitchen and her apprentice, and slowly the meal took shape. We had the goose liver, and Maman had a goose to roast as well, and she had also prepared a sorbet of rosemary for a cleanser. She showed me how to prepare a clear soup, and I started to giggle.

“What is amusing?”

“I was just remembering The Little Nicolas, Maman, and his teacher, Le Bouillon. ‘Look me in the eye!’ “

She laughed with me, and then shook a finger as if angry. “You should be paying more attention, my girl, these are lessons you will need to remember when you…”

She stopped, all of a sudden, as if her voice had left her, and the tears were back, just as quickly.

“My little sweet one, I forget, sometimes, and I must hurt you when I do. I was going to say ‘when you take a husband’ but then…”

She looked so guilty at that statement I had to hold her once more. She spoke into my neck, for I was already taller than her.

“I assume, I err, because this is so right for you, and yet, you are but newly a girl, and I do not even know if…if you are of the inclination”

“Maman, I am not newly a girl, I have always been a girl, and…and yes, I talk with Elle, and Margot, and yes I am a girl, and I am not one of THOSE types of girl, and maybe, I dream, maybe there is somewhere a boy, a man, who can come to love me…so wake up, foolish old person, and teach me what a girl must know! We have guests we must please, and they will be here all too soon”

She held me just a little longer, at the length of her arms. “You are right, my darling. Where is it you find such strength?”

I gave her my own sigh. “From necessity, Maman, from necessity. Come, I have something in the larder to show you”

“Not more bread?”

“Yes indeed. English bread. If you are happy for a dessert from the wrong season it would be new for Margot and her father. Rollo knows a man on the ferry, and he did some shopping in Portsmouth for him, and so we have the ingredients. They are not fresh, but then neither was this morning’s breakfast. Sometimes we women must adapt, yes?”

We returned to our preparations, and she was shedding tears as if in the deepest sorrow, but her face was all one smile.

The food cooked, and Roland prepared the room, including a carousel he had placed in Maman’s shoes. It had actually sat on them, because it was too large to fit inside, but it was there for the table, so it had had to be opened. It was a machine, where the heat of a burning candle sent warm air upwards through vanes that turned a miniature collection of mounted figures, tinkling a little bell as they span. Once more, my brother had found a way to make our little house even more our home, and it bought him kisses from both women in his life, just as the bell rang to announce the arrival of a woman who wished to enter it.

I was in my best dress, a dark blue sheath, and new earrings, of course, with my bigger shoes on my feet. Margot was an astonishment for me, sweetly elegant in a small black thing that would have graced the racks of Chanel, and her father was in a complete suit of clothing, a dark grey with small bird’s-eyes all over, both of them so clean and neat they looked as if pinned out. Margot spoiled the image just a little bit by squealing and rushing to me, while everyone shook hands and gave the kisses. M Boucher was already sniffing.

“Something smells delightful, Julienne”

“We have been working hard, Guillaume. It is the lot of a woman, alas, at Christmas”

“Indeed it is, so perhaps that other one can go and empty our car”

“Indeed, and perhaps my lazy son could stir from his repose to help her”

Start as you mean to continue, Maman, I thought. I remembered an old saying I had heard in the English class: let the dog see the rabbit. When they returned, all was smiling. Rollo had some large packages balanced on his arms, Margot a small sack of little ones, and as he entered the room, she had her hand on his arm to guide him, and a wink for me as she passed. It was later, though, that I heard.

The dinner was as good as anything my mother had ever offered to us, and the odd sorbet perfection in its role, but pride of place in my memories of that day will always go to my own offering, for that was what it had become in the end. I had obtained the ingredients so that Maman might prepare her special dish, but to my initial horror she had simply smiled and said “But it is not too difficult to prepare…”

Margot’s papa had looked at the odd domed confection doubtfully, but Rollo’s broad smile on its arrival disarmed the Bouchers’ suspicions. In the end, they were converted, and as we settled down with some small dishes of nuts and sheep droppings, and a large serving of a good coffee brought by M Boucher, Margot was seated within range of my brother, and it was he who raised the issue of gifts.

“Surely, now, it is the time?”

Maman nodded, and so I went to the floor and started passing out the packages that had been placed by our little tree.

“Rollo, for you, from me”

A pair of small binoculars. “For watching the seas, brother, not the arrival of the airline girls”

Margot frowned. “And you do this?”

My brother blushed. My brother! Things had happened, clearly. He coughed. “Once, perhaps, a long time ago”

We worked on, through the pile and the paper, and I had new shoes, and cosmetics, and a pretty little watch from my brother, and…no, that is not the important part of such a day. As a child, that was always the heart of the festival, what was within the wrappings. It was still important then, especially as it was all addressed to Sophie, and the contents were of a type that matched my soul, but the only things that truly mattered were the people around me. They were happy, they were smiling, even Margot’s father seemed to have lost the weariness that had marked his face.

“Sophie?”

“Yes, Maman?”

“The water closet, can you show your friend?”

I led her up the stairs, and to my surprise she insisted I accompany her inside.

“We are both girls, no, and girls who like men?”

I looked away as she did what she needed to, but I still had to ask. “Margot…Roland? What have you worked?”

She grinned, her joy evident. “So I walk with him to the car, and I have the key, and I pretend that I cannot work the electronic thing, and so he must show me. But I do not let go, and so then he must press my own thumb onto the switch, and push the button just so, and I must, you know how it is in these shoes made for Elle, I must keep my balance, so that is with my arm on his hip, no? So then…”

She was leaning forward, and I looked, and it was stockings that she was wearing, and not the tights I had.

“Françoise? She has dressed you today?”

Another radiant smile of warmth and delight. “Yes, she has, and it feels wonderful! So then, I have the car unlocked, so I just tug, just a little, and I give him the kiss on the cheek, for thank you, and he turns to smile and oh, Sophie, it is a beautiful smile…and so I kiss him again, on the mouth, yes, and he is surprised, and the smile is still there, and then he kisses me, and….”

She hugged herself, and it was all so very odd a picture, a tall blonde in stockings and heels, elegant despite the skirt around her waist and her location in THAT room, and still the teenaged girl shone through the carefully-arranged façade of the lady I saw before me. She looked me fully in the eyes, then, back from her dream.

“Sophie, I must find out some things, we must find them out”

“What things, my little friend?”

“Well, must I be married to your brother before Papa marries your mother?”

CHAPTER 15
I looked at her in shock, until she rose for her wiping, and I had to look elsewhere for my modesty.

“But Maman, she…”

Margot smiled into the mirror I faced. “Monsieur the doctor? I have heard things. He has a new reception lady, no?”

That was extremely peculiar; a schoolfriend knew more of my mother’s romances than did her own daughter. And Margot’s father? And Maman? That blush, the evening before, at church, suddenly I saw what had clearly been there for others to see, and if they did see, did not also M Boucher himself? I remembered my mother’s smile, the day in the sun when she had told me of her compact with our doctor, my doctor, and the frost of Mme Chinon that resulted. What was it Maman had said?

“No, it hasn’t been bad at all”

She was still young, still alive; why should I see anything odd? I turned from the mirror. “Margot, your Papa, he has spoken of this?”

She grinned, and for an instant she was another Elle. “Not in so many words, no, but he asked one or two things, such as the location of your own Papa”

“I have none. I have never had one”

“Calm, my little friend, calm. I meant no ill. It is just, as your mother has retained her ring, he was curious in what he thought was the most casual of interrogations”

I couldn’t help but smile. “And now he will start on a more rigorous course, no? About my brother?”

She blushed so prettily, and I lifted her chin again as her head dropped. “Elle’s maman, she has helped you with all this?”

I indicated the dress, the hair, the paint, and Margot’s grin was back. “Yes indeed! The dress is hers, and the shoes, which are only slightly too small, but the underneath is all mine. The brassiere is new, and the stockings, but I had no money for new knickers…”

Her voice tailed off, and then once more Elle shone through her eyes. “Anyway, a young man may just manage a sight of a good girl’s décolletage, especially if she is careful where she places it, but he should see no further, no?”

The laughter ended with an inspection of my own endowments. “They are coming, my girl, arriving together in a dead heat!”

The last was spluttered out in a wave of laughter, and then we simply had to repair our faces and return to the others. I watched Roland carefully as we entered, and there was a smile there, genuine and simply sweet. I looked over to M Boucher, and the expression of his face was more watchful. Margot settled down by Roland with a touch of his hand, and I looked across then to our mother, and she sent me a small smile of her own.

And we talked, and compared gifts, and expressed our gratitude, and I sat alone. It was now clear where Maman had cast her eyes, and Rollo’s were now filled with his Norman flower, for that was my thought, that my friend had come fully into bloom. I looked at her and realised that she had always been pretty, always a girl with good looks, but he had been released from that. It was not just the preparation given to her by Elle’s mother, but a glow from within her. The moment with Rollo had opened some window to her soul, and joy shone from her face. Rollo, for his part, looked almost stunned. It was still a look of happiness that sat in his mouth and eyes, but it was not the expression to which I had become accustomed when he had netted some polished girl of legs and breasts. No smugness, no satisfaction, just…I had not the words then, but now, as I write, I see that it was contentment. Not the look of a cat that has secured the best of the milk, but of a man after a good dinner. He looked satisfied, surprised and comfortable, all in one odd mixture.

Margot sat beside him, and her hand touched him often as they talked, until we were all interrupted by a strange sound, which was the snoring of her Papa. So, so tired.

“Sophie, a blanket for our guest? Alas, my charms as a woman appear to have been outdone by my skill in the kitchen. Margot? He does this often?”

She nodded. “Yes, Madame. He works, very long hours. He has since…since that time. I must call each end of each journey I make, so that he knows I have arrived safely, but he, he does not wish to spend time in the house”

Rollo enlaced his fingers with hers as tears threatened her eyes. “Perhaps, with new friends, we may cure him of this, no?”

She raised their joined hands to her lips, and kissed his. “We shall try, Rollo, we shall try”

There was another sound, then, my mother’s laughter. “So quickly comfortable for such a nervous child!”

“Child, Maman?”

Rollo’s manner was one of curiosity.

“Yes, my son, yet a child, as you must allow her to be for a while yet”

“You…you disapprove?”

Her laughter was louder, though Margot looked worried. “Disapprove, my dear son? Good heavens, how could I disapprove of such a thing, and with such a lovely one? No, it is only that you must be her protector before her suitor, no? At least, I hope, that would allow Guillaume some surcease. As for me…”

She laughed once more. “As for me, I am already counting the grandchildren I shall be delivered!”

Margot was a shining hot pink, just then, and I took the chance to hurry upstairs for the blanket, and as her Papa snored we three led Margot to the big sofa, and as Maman took her own chair we two girls settled either side of the token gentleman for a watching of the first of Pagnol’s ‘childhood memories’ films, the one about the partridges and the Catalan Uncle Jules, and in but a few minutes my friend had kicked off the not-quite-right shoes and curled her feet under her rump, leaning against my brother. He shifted, just enough, and an arm went across her shoulders. Maman just smiled, and soon we were immersed in Provence. I had always loved the books, and while the film did not quite match their subtlety, it still had charm. “There is only one T in ‘hermit’ “, priceless! As it ended, Maman stood to prepare a light supper, and as I went to rise she just shushed me and waved me back into my place beside my brother.

That brought me to awareness of exactly what it was we had been doing. He, the big man, had a girl either side of him, one to cuddle as a new love, the other to sit comfortably against his strength as a sister would. There are moments in my life when I have doubted my strength, queried the rightness of my decisions and the choices I have made, and then there are times when everything has fallen into place as do the balls in a bagatelle, and I have known, deeply, in my soul, that Sophie is real and always has been. That was one of those moments. I reached up and kissed my brother’s cheek as softly as I could.

“What was that for, my sweet?”

“Simply for being you, my brother”

“Alas that I must wash over the next few days, then”

“Your pardon?”

“Ah, to arrive at work, amid the men, with the marks of not one but two pairs of lips on my cheek, that would be a triumph”

I do not know quite how it began, but shortly thereafter two of us had sprung upon him, and his face bore many more such marks, and as I sat back to re-arm myself with fresh lipstick there was a pause; it ended when Margot simply and fully kissed him, one hand on his cheek, her eyes open and aware. I slipped away to the kitchen to leave them their space, and as I arrived M Boucher was stirring. Perhaps with a louder voice than strict necessity required, I bade him come with me to the kitchen, where Maman was heating water for coffee.

“Julienne, may I beg your pardon? It was of bad manners to fall asleep in such a way”

“Guillaume, were you not tired? Margot has told us of the hours you have been working. This is a time for family, a time to relax. You have, I hope dined well?”

“Very well, Madame. It was exquisite”

“Then, you will know of the myth from the Orient, that one must break wind to give compliments to the cook? Well, surely a well-fed man asleep in a chair is as traditionally French as can be? I need no better compliment, nor does my daughter, for we are a partnership in this room, not so, my little sweet one?”

She turned to see to the hot water, and called over her shoulder for me to ascertain what the two others wished to drink, and as she did so she gave a wince.

“I am stiff in the shoulders this afternoon, Sophie. Perhaps I should give you a greater share in our partnership?”

Margot’s father coughed, and then, quite shyly, “I have some facility in massage, Julienne. Perhaps I could loosen the tension in your shoulders?”

“That would be delightful, Guillaume. Please do”

I went back to the other two, who were now sitting as far apart as the sofa allowed. I laughed at the sight.

“Nobody will be fooled, you are far too obvious. Anyway, he is occupied at the moment”

Margot sat up. "Eh?"

“Giving Maman a massage for a neck I suspect is in perfect health. Coffee, tea, or?”

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!”

“Well, we have plenty of food to eat, and Roland will be happy”

“And not you, with your handsome man all of your own? Will you be having a stiff neck again? Oh, Guillaume, just there, that is so, so exquisitely just the right place”

“Young lady, a mother can lose the love she has!”

I cannot remember which of us started to laugh first, but it was laughter born of joy, not of humour. We girls had said our goodnights as demurely as nuns, but it was clear that four people out of our five were simply eager to let their passions run just a little freer. I decided at last that as it was to be a less formal evening, I would dress accordingly, and so I chose a simple dark skirt with a shirt in ivory. The voices were still loud.

“Roland!”

“Yes, Maman?”

“Can you drive down to my place and get a couple of chairs from J-P? We have but six!”

“But we are but…of course!”

I could plainly hear in his voice when he understood. I sat on my bed for a while, looking at the additions to my wardrobe, the little watch, the cosmetics, and I felt as content as I could ever remember being. This was living, and it would be living with my first and second friends ever beside me. There was a clatter outside my door, and I realised that despite my own choice of a more casual manner of dress, Maman was setting her nets. That was the sound of heels, probably her best ones. It felt strange; my mother was my mother, and there she was setting out as a young woman would, for her young man. I grinned and hugged myself---she deserved it all, all the happiness the Good Lord could send her. Had she not stood by me from the first? Had she not almost whored herself for my sake? I could begrudge her nothing.

I checked the things that I would need, including the small package of perfume I had determined would best suit my little friend. That brought another smile, because to Margot I had already bequeathed the finest of men. That man was soon back at our house, with two chairs that did not match those we owned, but so much the worst if that was to be our biggest problem.

Maman had spent the morning baking. We had plans for a cold meal, preceded by a proper winter potage with more of the bread she had finally admitted worked well for what it was, and then an English plate. She had found strawberries from somewhere, and we had a tarte of them, and she had also laboured on a galette of the kings, even though it was early for it.

“Well, they will be fed well, my darling one, even if a little in advance of the season. I will not have guests…”

She trailed off, and it was with a tear beginning in her eye. “Yes, my little one, guests. We have guests, we CAN have guests, we have a place, a home, to bring guests to, and I despaired, for so long…”

She took a cloth to her eyes. “This is your doing, daughter. Without…without your need we would not have seen our own. We were Arabs, my love, street Arabs, and now we are a bourgeois and two bourgeoises. Thank you, my sweet”

I took her in my arms. “No, not me, it is you. Just the little things, like that word. Bourgeoises. Acceptance of me is in your heart and your words, and I could ask for no more, nothing finer. Now, not-quite-so-young-but-but-still-young-enough-woman, be gone and wash your face!”

She laughed, and once more it was of happiness rather than amusement.

“And so daughter becomes mother, no? Where is the timid child I once had?”

“She has emerged into the light and forgotten her fears, Maman. Now, we have but minutes!”

When I entered the kitchen I saw that she had been playing the game with the hot water, that of the nervous, where it is set to boil repeatedly so that it will be instantly available to warm the new arrivals. The weather had turned, and we had heavy squalls of rain bursting upon us from the direction of the Cotentin and wind, wind to make the fishing horrible. Our fire was of electricity, but it was on and warm, and we were as ready as we could be.

“Sophie?”

“Maman?”

“A touch…”

She brought forth a headband, in ivory that almost matched my garment, and fitted it to my hair.

“You have your new roses in, so let your friends see them, no? Ah, is that wheels?”

There was a clatter at the door, and then the house shook to the entrance of Elle, who was as energetic as ever.

“Was it good? Was the Father Christmas kind? What did you get? Pretty earrings! Serfs, bring forth the offerings!”

We were eight, for Margot and her father had ridden with Elle, and of course Margot had to go back to the car for something, and Roland to help her. When they returned, with small smiles, I held up a hand.

“Elle, chut! Now, my ladies, gentlemen and small person, we have the winter potage for a start and a warming of the body, with bread that is already warm, and then there will be a gentle collection of cold things from the roasting yesterday, plus some hams and saucisson with their cornichons and mustards, of course, and then…then we have a galette of the kings, and strawberry tartes with Chantilly, and, oh, lots more!”

Emil smiled. “We have brought more important things”

Roland stood up straighter. “Would these things perhaps be contained in glass?”

Emil grinned. “How else could we have a true Norman meal without a hole? Good Calvados, of course, and we have pommeau as well. I think our three young blossoms are now of an age , no?”

Roland twitched slightly at that, and Maman gave an almost silent snort of amusement. Margot’s Papa merely looked a little uncomfortable, but that had started with the three kisses he had given to Maman on his arrival.

“Sophie?”

“Yes, Maman?”

“It is yet early. I shall prepare some coffee; perhaps you could show your friends your room?”

“Of course”

“A half hour, then?”

As soon as we were in my bedroom, Elle almost attacked Margot.

“Tell! Tell all! What is he like? Did he use his tongue? Where were his hands?”

Margot held hers up for peace, and then gave a recount of what she had described to me the day before. “It was quick, and yes, the second time, there were tongues, and…and he put his hand on my waist, and at the back of my head, and then, yes, he did move his hand, and it was to my behind, so I moved it back to my waist”

Elle laughed. “And how long was it before you moved his hand? Eh? Eh?”

There was her blush, and her head lowered, but her eyes looked up through her hair, and the smile was still there.

“Perhaps a few seconds. And yes, it was very, very nice, and…is it sinful to want to tear a man’s clothing from his body?”

Elle raised an eyebrow. “Not at all. Sinful to do it in public, though. Could you feel, you know, when he held you?”

Margot was glowing like the fire in our front room. “I will not answer that one”.

Elle roared. “He has big hands and big feet, you lucky girl! Now, if I can only get Matthieu to turn his eyes in my direction”

Margot was still blushing, so I suggested that while ripping his clothing from his body might not be the most subtle way of attracting attention it would at least be effective. Elle grinned.

“And what about you, my tall friend?”

All at once, the mood broke, as she realised where I stood in life. “I am so sorry, Sophie. I did not think”

“It is nothing, Elle, nothing more than a great compliment. If you can forget that far, then I shall have hope. Come, there is a meal to be had”

We descended, and the adults were in fine form, Maman close to Margot’s Papa without being too close, and unlike our little hole in Caen we were soon seated properly, around a table, as people should be, and we had our pommeau, and then the rest of the meal, with the hole, of course, and Emil and Roland swapped more stories of foolish tourists while Françoise gave us tales she had ‘heard from a dancer she knew’, though I believe the Bouchers were not fooled. Some of her stories were scandalous, and there were names of people that were well-known, and once more laughter filled our little house. Regretfully, of course, it had to end, with Françoise the one who avoided the calvados so that the drive back would be safe. Margot’s Papa helped Maman clear the dishes away, an obviously planned stratagem, while Margot took things to the car, which appeared to require Roland’s help. I had to grasp Elle’s hand to prevent her rushing out to spy.

And then we three were alone. My first Christmas was proving to be a true wonder.

A little while later, amid the misery of the January weather, I was once more at the bus stop. I was not feeling in the best possible mood, because I was in trousers. It was not nice weather for a dress or a skirt, and the trousers made sense, but it still felt like a capitulation. My boots were feminine, my bust surely was, as were my hair and my face, but that one garment just said ‘Serge’ to me.

My mood lifted on boarding the bus, immersed immediately in my coterie, and there was gossip and more gossip. Especially, it seemed, Elle wanted to know how many more times Margot and Papa had visited us. I decided the subject should change.

“What are you going to do about this Matthieu?”

“He has to notice me, Sophie”

“Everybody notices you, little one. It is unavoidable”

“It is not!”

Fatima simply said, very calmly, “It is true. It is indeed very easy to overlook Elle”

There was laughter all the way to the school, and the weather outside was thus rebuffed.

I found him in the break between classes, a tall boy, of course, and I decided to be as bold as I could.

“Matthieu…”

“Ah. You are Sophie, yes?”

“Yes, Sophie. Listen…it is not for me I ask this, OK? But, just, are you perhaps…without liaisons at the moment?”

He wasn’t a bad-looking boy, if you discounted the few spots that were on his face, and he cocked his head to one side. “I am without a little friend just now, that is correct. Why?”

“I have a friend…”

He smiled, and I saw at once what Elle saw, beyond the size of his feet. “This would be a little friend indeed, no?”

I smiled back. “Yes, very little. What shall I tell her?”

“Well, there is a problem, in that I also have a friend who is alone at the moment, and he has spoken about her friends. Perhaps, no?”

I laughed. “Fatima certainly does not get allowed to do such things, and Margot, well, she is already involved”

“No, I think he may have meant another friend of hers. This girl is also tall, and very slim, and…and she blushes so well, too. What should I tell Benoit?”

This was almost too much. I had come to plead the case for Elle, and then, suddenly, I was the target. What to do?

“This Benoit, would he be the strong boy, the one with the blonde hair?”

“Yes, that’s him. Do I have an answer?”

I sighed. This was indeed a dream, but was it safe? If he knew, if he discovered me, I should be lost.

“I do not know. I must speak to my mother, but, yes, I would perhaps be willing to take a walk one day, when the weather is better”

“I will tell him, and you may tell your friend that, yes, if she wishes, we could talk”

I thanked him, and turned to go, and he called to me. “And Sophie? Benoit thinks trousers make your behind look much better!”

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?”

I had to laugh at her assumptions. “No, dear, sweet mother, it is him that is looking at me, or at least that is what his friend has said”

“Oh…I am sorry, my darling, but I was assuming…”

I realised she had tears in her eyes. “Maman…”

“It is nothing, but please do not hate me. I still see my boy and I did not suspect a boy would not, would instead see my daughter, yes?”

I could feel the blush as it invaded my face, and as usual I decided I would blame my little pills. “Yes, Maman…he apparently has been looking at my behind. It appears to be not unattractive. Maman…you would that I had been, you know, still Serge?”

She turned away to face the wall, and I saw her hands move and knew that she was wiping away tears. She turned her gaze to where the wall met the ceiling. “Sophie…yes, Sophie it is, Sophie it should have been from the beginning, I know that now and I thank the Good God and His Blessed Mother that we have found this to be true when you are still of an age that some things may be corrected, but I once had a son that I did indeed love with all of a mother’s heart, and sometimes, just sometimes…but then I see my pretty daughter, and I know what is right for her”

“My mother, I am not pretty!”

She turned to me, her arms folded and one hand touching a cloth to her eyes. “No, my little one, you are not. Serge…it seems right to speak if ‘him’, no? Serge was already too tall, and you are still growing. You are not pretty, no, not like Margot is, or even Héloise, but you are long in the leg and striking in the face. You have a strong look, like Athena in the old statues, and you have good skin and hair. I can see why a boy would look more than once. But, my sweet, there is still more of you than there should have been, and less where there should be more. If he were to discover, then it would not be safe. Oh, holy skies, this is hard. My sweet child, think: I am also seeing what was my son…I am realising how normal my daughter really is, and it gives me pain. Pity an old woman, but I wish to have grandchildren to spoil”

I stepped forward to hold her, and for an instant she simply laid her head on my bosom, arms still folded. Then, she uncurled herself and gripped me hard with her arms.

“My darling daughter, we shall do this together, you, I and your two friends. But please: do not speak of this to your brother”

“My brother knows I am but a girl, Maman”

“Yes, and big brothers tend to be a trifle protective of their sisters. Now, off and change, we will have chicken with its shirt on tonight”

“Plenty of garlic?”

“Of course! We shall find out how much courage this boy has. And what is his name?”

“Benoit, Maman”

“Would he perhaps be a friend of that Matthieu that Elle is mooning over? Ah, of course. The matchmaking goes both ways. This will be four children going somewhere, yes?”

“How did you know about Elle’s…interest?”

She grinned, tears almost forgotten. “I am a mother, my sweet. It is what we do! One day…one day, with the Grace of God, one day I hope you will know this to be true”

The moods were sweeping over her like cloud shadows on a day of strong winds, but she was humming as she attacked the chicken. Not a word was said to Roland.

The bus the next day was slightly late, and it was of course raining, so I was a little out of my best mood when I finally boarded.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Did you speak with Matty?”

“Yes”

“Whore of shit, this is hard work! Margot, talk to her; I will just swear again, and that is not attractive, and frowning gives girls lines where they do not want them”

“Well, Sophie? Did you speak to Matthieu for Elle?”

“I did, yes, and he is not without interest and he has no little friend just now”

Elle squealed. “Yes! So he has said yes!”

“But there is a condition”

“Tell me!”

“Calm yourself, Elle. Matthieu has a friend, Benoit, who is also alone just now, and he has an interest in one of your friends, and so he asked if she was similarly free”

“Well, it can’t be Fatima–oh, shut your mouth, you know what your papa would say! And Margot…oh, he must not know!”

“That she and my brother are already selecting wallpaper?”

The tall blonde slapped my arm, then laughed. I raised her hand, and kissed it.

“You make Rollo happy, Margot, and better, you make him calm. You make him the man I have always loved. No, Elle, it is not Margot”

“Then…oh, Sophie! It is you, no?”

“Yes, it is me. Apparently, he thinks my behind looks nice in trousers. I suppose that is a beginning of sorts”

Elle grabbed me for a hug, and then she asked the usual question.

“About size 47 or 48, I think, but that is of no importance”

“Of course it is of importance! Oh”

Her face fell, and in a quieter voice she apologised. “Sophie, you see how real you are, I forgot, yes? So, what is it he wants to do?”

“Well, it is not the time of year to walk behind the sand, so I think he wants to go for steak-chips, or perhaps the cinema”

“Only if we can choose the film. I wish no noisy boys’ thing”

Fatima had sat quietly through all of this, as was her way, just waiting to add a choice word, and she did not disappoint.

“Elle, the choice of film will not be important, not when you will have Matthieu’s face against yours from the instant the lights go off”

“Well, if it is the cinema and not a meal this girl will be hungry!”

“Then I shall see if Maman has the thing from our last trip back to the old country, the thing for my brother on the aeroplane. The booster seat”

And we were there, Fatima, as so often, leading us laughing into our day’s work, and there, at the entrance, stood Matthieu, and a strong yellow-haired boy I recognised as Benoit.

“Salut, the girls!”

Elle walked straight up to him and took a stance with her feet apart, and looked up at him, which was of course a necessity. “Well, is it for a meal, or did you have designs on the cinema?”

Benoit started laughing, but I noticed he kept glancing my way. When I caught his eye, I gave him just the slightest nod, but my heart was hammering, and I suspected I might vomit. Matthieu was smiling down at Elle.

“I see we have an understanding, at least for two of us…ah, the day is becoming a good one. Perhaps we should leave the shy ones to their own company?”

He walked off with all the friends I had in the world, and Benoit seemed suddenly fascinated by his shoes. Such a big strong boy, and so reticent!

“Benoit, Matty said, you understand, that he would be happy with Elle, but that…”

He still stared at his toes. “That you would need to go with his slow friend? Thank you, but it is not as a charitable act I wish something from you”

I was still terrified, but I held it to me and made my words calm. “I am not here as charity, Benoit. Matty said, his words were, that you liked my behind in trousers”

That all came out in a rush, and I watched as his own cheeks turned the colour I felt my own must be. He mumbled something unclear.

“Your pardon?”

“I said that it is true. I saw your legs all Summer, and they are nice, but it was when you wore the trousers, and I just said it once to Matty, and he said he would ask, and I told him not to, and piece of shit, I am not good at this”

He was so shy I thought my heart would split. “Benoit…I am not someone who has had a boyfriend, nor have I had any boy tell me such things before. I thank you for your courtesy, and I would be honoured to walk somewhere with you, not as a deal but because I want to”

He looked up at that. “You speak the truth? You would go out with me?”

“I have also seen your behind in trousers, Benoit…oh, and now I see your smile, and how could any sane girl refuse you?”

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.

The actress was stunningly beautiful, and although I knew I would soon have the breasts of my very own that I craved, I envied her so much in the scene where she and her lost man made love. There was no unnecessary thing shown, and far more was suggested with the American actress, but the whole thing was simply so sweet I cried.

The boys had met us at the tram stop by the cinema, taken our arms as they walked us there, bought the tickets and confectionary, and taken opposite ends as we sat, so that I was between Elle and Benoit. That was an interesting experience. Benoit was so shy that he sat like a statue for a long while, whereas I was nudged and pushed by my girlfriend as she seemed to launch a physical attack on Matty as soon as the lights faded. I do not know what they saw of the film, but for half an hour they struggled with each other’s mouth before settling into an embrace that must have been uncomfortable for Elle as she was so small, pulled across the arm rest between them. It was fascinating to watch in the dim light, and occasionally amusing, and I was happy to divide my attention between the spectacle on the screen and that in the next two seats.

Then Benoit took hold of my left hand, where it lay on the arm rest that separated our own seats, and I turned to him, and he was so clearly frightened that I felt I should smile, and he smiled back, so what else could I do but match the embrace of my friend? I do not mean that we kissed, but it felt absolutely right that I should lean against him with his arm over my shoulders.

I felt very confused, in my mind as well as in my body, but I knew that where I was and what we were doing were right for me, right for Sophie. At the same time, especially with some of the noises our friends were making, and with the soft touches of Benoit’s fingers to my bare arm, I wanted more, and that was when it was all wrong, for the thing I had between my legs, the thing that I had secured from view with two thick pairs of knickers, was making its presence known to me At seventeen, I knew all about the theory of sex, but what I wanted could not be, even though I was not sure of what that actually was. One year, and then I might be able to change those things, but that was still a year and I still wanted…something. I twisted a little bit, as some awful explosion happened on the screen that I did not wish to see, and then I looked up at my companion, and of course it happened. My face was just below his, and he was looking at me and not at the film, and so he kissed me, or I kissed him, or we did it together, but a kiss it was. Just a quick meeting of lips, and I held back for one moment.

I had seen the films, and they were always the same. The first gentle, soft kiss, and then both people launch into some violent seizing and sharing of their saliva, and that was what I was expecting. Instead, he just held himself, smiled that smile, and said “Thank you”, and that was when it was I that kissed him, and it was so gentle, he was so gentle, that every twitch and movement of that thing became a torment, and so I held myself together by strength of will and kept my smile, kept him close. My stomach turned somersaults as I did so, and then we settled back into the embrace we had been sharing. I took one look at Elle, and I can only assume now that Matty actually had his hand inside her shirt, because they were clearly not watching the film. Once more, I felt envy. Some day, my bosom would be entirely flesh, of my own body, and then I would be free to share it. Just then, however, I was feeling my emotions mixed as if they were in a whirlpool. I was excited, I was delighted this boy, this boy with that smile, had decided he liked me enough to kiss me. I was, in all senses, sexually aroused, and that was so confusing it was painful. And above all, I was frightened. If he were to find out what my body carried, I would be lost. He found his own courage, and one hand moved towards my breast, so I caught it, held it and smiled, and received another gentle kiss. I then simply settled into his embrace once more and cradled his hand against what he thought was real.

There was light, and the banging of seats, and a look in Elle’s face of utter delight. I passed across some paper tissues from my bag, and pointed at their faces.

“I think perhaps you should both clean before we go outside. Then, Elle, perhaps some repairs?”

She came suddenly to life in her explosive way. “Holy, no! We still have a tram ride to take, and then there will be a bus. Matty is to see me home, all the way, so that I am safe for him on Monday”

The boy looked like a deer that stands before a car at night, eyes wide, but there was a smile, and he just nodded. Benoit laughed. “Matty, my friend, you have not been seduced, more like demolished, no?”

Matty shook his head, as if to clear a daze. “I have no complaints, Benoit, and I thank out matchmaker here. Sophie, thank you indeed!”

My own boy placed his arm around my waist, and I jerked as I felt him test the elasticity of part of my behind. He then kissed my cheek, still so, so gently. “I have no complaints on my part, Matty. Shall we buy coffees or cocas for these ladies?”

Elle coughed. “If we are to go to a café, then Sophie is right, and we must look our best. We owe it to these two good men. Come, girl!”

We found our way to the toilets, and as we did things with paint and powder, I looked at her. Face flushed, breathing still more rapid than normal, she was dreamily happy.

“Are you all right, Elle?”

She turned to me. “No. I want to tear all of his clothing away and commit….oh, seven or eight cardinal sins upon and with his body. Why have I waited so long?”

I laughed, and she put her hand to my arm. “I am sorry, my little friend, I did not think. You cannot do such, can you? And…you want to, no?”

I sighed. “Yes, I do, and he is such a sweet and gentle boy…his kisses…”

Elle grinned. “How big is he?”

“What? I don’t know, how could I?”

She turned back to the mirror. “By feeling, of course, as I did”

“NO!”

“Oh yes. It was only fair, for he had already measured my breasts….oh, girl, it is as they say, big hands, big feet, HUGE piece! But he made me stop, he said it was too much. And you…”

She was serious once more. “You, you cannot do such things, because…oh, my sweet friend, you have brought me to this time and place, and I have brought you only frustration and fear, and here I am gloating about things that simply bring you more pain. Can you forgive?”

I embraced her, as a mother might a small child. “Darling Elle, I am at a cinema, with friends, with a gentle boy who is taller than me, and kisses delightfully, instead of where I was a year ago, looking to finish everything. How can I condemn you for that?”

“You…you were thinking of suicide?”

I looked into the mirror, and a girl looked back, hair unbound, nose perhaps too large, hands definitely so, but a girl, myself. “Elle, it is a commonplace thing with persons like me. When hope has fled, it is easier”

Her voice was soft. “It is a mortal sin, Sophie, and you would be condemned to eternity in the fire”

I smiled at her, as best I could. “You know that I do not believe in that, Elle”

“No, but your mother does. If you had…been successful, then she would be broken, for she would believe. You must promise me, my dear one, promise me never to consider such things again”

An embrace, another repair, and as we left the toilets she whispered “Oh, and do not worry about Benoit, he had to cover himself up when he rose. Not as big as Matty, but…adequate!”

We chose not to explain our laughter to the boys. Cocas in a café, silly gossip, the boys swapping accounts of parts of the film I had missed, all of which apparently involved either death or black lingerie, or both, and more laughter. They did indeed insist on riding with each of us all of the way to our homes, which meant that I was left at last alone with Benoit at the rear of the bus.

“Sophie…thank you. I am not experienced with girls, they have always laughed at me for my size, and you have been so nice to me. Please, can we do something more? I mean, again?”

I rose to leave the bus, and as I stood I stole one more kiss. “I would love to. You are not the only happy one tonight”

That smile. Maman asked no questions as I entered, my own smile all the evidence she needed. She just held me, and wept.

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.

“Sophie, I know absolutely that you are where you should be, how you should be, but each time you cross another threshold I feel loss, the loss of my boy. And at the same time, it is joy. I rejoice in your happiness, and yet…”

She pulled my head lower so that she could kiss my forehead. “Does a mother not weep when her child marries? I weep in that same manner, but I also see how much you have missed in your childhood. Forgive this foolish woman her tears, and tell me of your evening”

I could feel the blood rising into my face, and at that, as if a switch were thrown, my mother laughed.

“We must talk, and you must tell me of your evening, and it is traditional for a mother and daughter to do so in dressing gowns and with chocolate, and I am nothing if not traditional. Upstairs and change, and I shall make the drinks”

I looked at her, my cheeks even hotter, and she grinned like a much younger woman. “No, I do not need to hear EVERYTHING! Be quick now”

Nightdress and gown, slippers and a hairband, and I was soon beside my mother on the sofa, a bowl of hot brown delight in my hands.

“Elle, she will have been friendly with her boy?”

I almost spat out my drink with laughter. “Oh, Maman, friendly is not the word! We sat together, with the boys outside, and I do not think she saw much of the film!”

“And how much did you see, my sweet?”

“Enough…”

Once more, I could feel the heat in my face. Maman touched the back of her hand to my cheek. “And he was a polite young man?”

“Very, Maman”

“And how was the kissing?”

The door banged, saving me from having to answer, and Rollo was home from work. He entered the living room after doffing his boots and jacket, and saw us sitting together with our chocolate. Something worked in his face, and then he smiled, and there was the sound of the refrigerator as he went to the kitchen for a beer. Glass in hand, he settled into the armchair opposite us.

“It went well, my sister?”

Once more my face betrayed me, and he smiled, and it was a sad one. “Sophie, if only things were that simple. Is he a good boy?”

I just nodded. Rollo sighed. “All of this, my mother, we should have seen so many years ago. I do not think I ever had a brother, at any time. Sophie, you like this boy?”

“Yes. Very much”

“Then you must not be tempted to tell him, no? There is no way of knowing how he would feel, and you are young yet. Your strumpet friend, she had a good time?”

So abrupt the switch. He had delivered the warning, enough to make sure I understood, and then moved to joking about Elle.

“My brother, I thought she was going to devour his entire face at one point. There is kissing, and then there is, I don’t know, assault on someone’s mouth”

“And this kissing–it was enjoyable?”

“Rollo…well, yes, it was, and it was gentle, and the thing the most important was that it was RIGHT, it was what should be. Maman, brother, it was what I have not known I was dreaming of, but when it happened, I knew, yes?”

Rollo sipped his beer. “And this boy; he didn’t try to go where he should not?”

“His name is Benoit, Roland. And, well, he might have let a hand move towards my breast, but that is what boys do, no? And when I took his hand to stop him, he was stopped, he did not try to go further. Rollo, you do not try to touch Margot’s breasts, then?”

I had not realised my brother himself could blush. “That is different. Margot and I…look, both of you, we are family, yes? We are our own world, within the world of others, we are our own strength and support?”

I felt Maman tense beside me. “Yes, we are. Are you telling us that there may soon be more to our family, Roland?”

Once more he blushed. “No, Maman, not like that. We have not…she is young, my sweet ones, but she is not young in other ways. She is wiser than I would have expected from her years and no, she is not like the girls I have had before. Oh, mother, you know I have been a very…successful young man in the town, a very hot rabbit. Margot is not one of those girls. What I meant was…”

He was clearly nervous, and I suddenly understood. For the first time ever, I saw my brother in love, and it was not the face or the legs of some air girl he would take to bed a few times, but rather more.

“Sophie…Maman….”

He was trembling, I saw. I left my mother’s side and went to sit on his knee. Tall as I was, he was still so much bigger, so much stronger. “Rollo, we are a family, this is love, this is our world. Are you saying what I think?”

He squeezed me with his arm, and smiled up at me. “I need to speak to Guillaume…oh, Maman, you do blush too, then? I need to speak to him about this”

He twisted beneath me, and his other hand went to a pocket of his trousers, whence he removed a small box. I knew immediately, and started to laugh.

“You wound me, my sister!”

“No, my sweet brother, no! It is just…”

I had to wait till my laughter eased, and then, as I spoke, I kept my gaze on my mother.

“Margot has said to me that she needs to marry you before her father marries Maman, otherwise she does not know whether the law will allow such things! You have had your answer before you have asked the question!”

I looked across to our mother’s face, mouth open and cheeks red. “Maman, we have both seen, no, we have all three seen that you and her father have an attraction. Is there anything that is wrong with that?”

She shook herself, rather like a dog. “No, my little one, there is not. And, yes, we have looked at each other, and perhaps we have both looked again”

Rollo in turn laughed. “You have devoured each other with the eyes would be more truthful!”

He turned my head with his hand, strong yet so gentle, like Benoit, like my Benoit, and stared into my eyes, just a hint of moisture in his own. “This is truth you speak, about Maggie? That she has this desire?”

“Rollo, she is absolutely smitten with you. There is never a day she does not speak of it. She will say yes, have no fear, and I am sure that her father will approve. After all, he likes the family, or at least one of us, eh, Maman?”

She was still flustered, but with another shake she made herself once more the matriarch. “Next weekend, then, you have no work, Roland. We have a…we have a meal for ALL of the family we wish to gather to ourselves, yes? You ask this thing, but we speak to Guillaume before you speak to Margot, yes? And Sophie, this boy, this Benoit; you will invite him. I would see where my daughter’s ayes are looking. Is that a plan”

The sofa is big enough, just, for three.

Monday morning and my friends were all aboard the bus, and Elle was already telling the more salacious details of the cinema excursion.

“And here she is, the other temptress!”

“I am no temptress, Elle”

“Not true, not when I looked at his trousers, he was very tempted!”

She then held her hands apart and there was more space there, surely, than any male member could span. Fatima made some remark about fishermen and escaped prey, and I looked to see how Margot felt. Just a smile, and a squeeze of my shoulder.

“How is Rollo, Sophie?”

“Tired, Maggie”

She blushed. “It is only him that calls me that…please don’t”

“Oh, my little friend, I know. Maman has asked if you will dine with us on Saturday, you and your father. Will you be free?”

“I think so. I will ask. Oh, here are those boys…”

Matty and Benoit had just boarded the bus, two stops before school, and Matty came directly to Elle, where they proceeded to make a spectacle of themselves. Benoit just stood and smiled, so I held out my hand for his, and when he took it I kissed his own. There was a loud sigh of delight from my friends, but there were no seats by us for the boys, so what could two of us do but give ours up in return for their laps?

“Benoit, what are you doing on Saturday? Would you be able to come for the midday meal?”

“I will ask. Your family would be happy for a stranger to eat with them?”

“It was Maman’s idea. There will be six of us”

School, for five days. English and art and French, how delightful, but also mathematics and other impositions. Each break, a meeting with my Benoit, a kiss in quiet places, and too short a ride home together at the end of the day. All week, a steady inquisition from Margot about my brother, who she would not see till the Saturday. Each answer of mine as reticent as could be.

Maman did two of her specialities that day, the soup from Sá¨te and then the salmon in a crust, and Guillaume had clearly known from some secret source that it would be fish, because he brought bottles of a good Chablis, a premier cru. Benoit was in a suit, three pieces including the waistcoat, and a tie, and I fully understood Elle’s desire to indulge in the tearing off of clothing. As we kissed in greeting, my mother watched, and once more I saw how her emotions conflicted each with the other, but she was cordial, and accepted his bottle of Muscadet with a smile.

Margot was beautiful beyond my words to tell. Simply that. I could list her clothing, describe her hair, but it would all be inadequate for the purpose. I clearly saw why my brother had desired her, but then I knew the inside Margot, the good friend and confidante. Her father, I must admit, definitely had charm, and again I could see my mother melting.

Soup, with wine and chatter. Salmon, Maman and I making Margot sit down again as we brought in the salmon and its accompaniments. Rollo for the cheeses, and then my own summer pudding, the first thing I had been taught to prepare by my mother, and then coffees, and a few sheep droppings left over from Christmas, and then…

“Margot…”

“Yes, Rollo?”

“You know, my family knows, that I have been very popular as a young man. I hope…I hope that causes no worries for you, but I would like to say that I wish to stop being popular and simply become faithful. Would you accept…?”

That small box again, and a look of such shock on Margot’s face, shock, and then joy, tears, and finally, “Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!”

We all kissed; it seemed appropriate.

CHAPTER 20
That was a joyous evening, and Benoit actually seemed somewhat embarrassed to be brought into the middle of such an intimate moment for the two families, at least until I took his hand again and smiled at him. I did not think I could ever tire of his face, not with that smile.

Margot had the ring on her finger as soon as she could open the box, and she was in tears so many times that evening Maman found a box of paper handkerchieves and placed them by her plate with a smile and a press of her hand. There were toasts, and smiles, and my potential stepfather, for that surely was Maman’s desire, held her hand throughout. After dinner, oh, that was fun. We had but the sofa and one armchair, so we had to compromise, and that compromise was for Margot to sit on the knees of my brother, and what else could I do but prevail upon my boy to do his duty in a similar way?

Maman laughed at the sight. “I am too old for such silliness! I will bring a chair from the dining room”

Guillaume took her hand once more, and with the words “No you are not, and no you will not!” he pulled her onto his own lap, and I heard my mother giggle as girlishly as Elle at her most excited. I think he had consumed some calvados by then, and I started to worry about his ability to drive, for he did not seem a man overly fond of alcohol, unlike my sperm donor. I brought up the subject when Maman and I went to refresh the drinks.

“Benoit’s papa will collect him in an hour, but surely Guillaume is not safe for driving?”

“We shall make room, my sweet. Margot can take my bed, and I shall sleep on the sofa. Guillaume, well, we can arrange some blankets and a duvet or two in the dining room. You are absolutely right”

And so it went. Benoit’s papa was on time, and of course I had to meet him and receive his kisses, and then Benoit left me with a very chaste kiss of his own, which was acceptable given that we had spent some twenty minutes outside awaiting the car. That time had not been wasted, not at all, and I returned to the house with a smile and began to collect the bedding for the more mature people. As the hours seemed to have run their course and Sunday would soon arrive.

There were noises in the night; a creak of floorboards, some low conversation, a soft moan, or perhaps the wind. Margot was seventeen, and in love. It was not my business. Besides, I had my suspicions about my mother’s nocturnal activities. Where was the sin? Two were to be married, perhaps the other two as well, and as somebody who was not exactly of a type of which the Church approved it was hardly my place to condemn. The next morning, I made sure that I sang as I made my toilet, and again as I went down the stairs to prepare the morning’s food. Maman came into the kitchen as I began to make coffee and chocolate, and she looked slightly ashamed. I kissed her cheek and squeezed her shoulders, and she smiled, and it was as if her face shone. I laughed.

“Not too old then?”

“Oh! I am not an ancient!”

“No, silly Maman, HIM!”

She laughed , heartily, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “No, my sweet, he is most definitely no too old, even after the drink. Oh, oh, oh!”

She wriggled with what seemed like delight, and then shook her head. “No. I have said too much already”

“But not done enough yet?”

“Cheeky girl! Anyway, how were things with that boy, that Benoit? Oh, I need no words then. He is a good type, that one. Sophie…do not tell him yet. It would not be wise. Here, I will take him some coffee, go and warn Roland that he is awake”

I made unnecessary noise as I ascended, and when I reached the top the door of Maman’s room was just closing. I knocked at Rollo’s door, and on his word entered. The bed was disordered, and there was an aroma…he looked shamefaced. I smiled, and told him I had heard.

“Sophie, it wasn’t me, yes? She came to my room, and then she was naked, and…”

“Hush, my brother. You are to be married, so it is the sort of thing that is expected these days, but perhaps not with her father asleep downstairs”

That brought one of his more normal grins. “From what I heard, he did not sleep much”

“From what I heard, I was the only one who did sleep! Come, I shall leave you to dress and go and…wake the sleeping beauty from the bed she has not just entered”

Margot was sitting up, looking slightly lost, as if in a dream, and when I spoke she gave me a look so similar to my mother’s that I no longer had any doubts as to what had disturbed me in the night. I smiled, as gently as I could.

“I know where you lay last night, my dear friend. It was no wrong, and my brother is a good man”

There was a twitch to her face. “Elle would have an opinion on that, I am sure, but yes, oh my, a very good man indeed!”

“What was it like?”

She sighed. “Wonderful! So wonderful…but a little painful, and there was all sorts of messiness, and…”

She blushed. “Sophie…I must ask. He was my first, and, are they all, men’s pieces, are they all so big? I mean, you sort of have a knowledge of this that most girls lack”

I snorted. “I never once tried to have a look at the penis of my brother, girl, and the only other one I have seen…”

I trailed off, for it was painful. The only penis I had ever seen close up was the one hidden under two pairs of knickers, the one I would prefer never to have seen at all. I had now felt Benoit’s, not in the manner of Elle, not with my hand, but as we pressed together for a kiss, and suddenly the pain was there. How could I ever know such things? When would my time come, if it ever did? Margot saw, and held me.

“Some day, little one, some day. What is the English song, some day your prince will come? Now, I have to ask: does your mother have sanitary items, plugs? I…I bleed a little still. I used mine last night, to spare your sheets, but if I am to use the bidet I will need another. Before breakfast, yes?”

I helped her to the necessities, and then I found myself laughing. If Margot had only understood the joke the English made of those words.

Breakfast was a quiet affair, with many looks exchanged across and around the table, and then the visitors took their leave, with embraces and kisses. We waved them off, and as soon as the car had left, Maman turned to my brother.

“Well?”

He looked at his toes. “Yes, but she came to me”

“Oh, my darling, be careful. She has her schooling to finish, and if she is to go further she must not be with child. That girl can be more than someone to keep a house, not so?”

“I would be wed tomorrow, Maman”

“No, you would not, for it would not be fair on her. So…”

She stared into the air for a moment. “I will speak to Guillaume–no, Sophie, be silent this time. I shall speak to him and see if we can arrange some contract or other. Roland, you will sleep with this girl, or she with you, whether or not we approve, but I would rather it is done safely, in all senses. Listen to me…I loved your father–shut your mouth for now, girl---I loved your father, and I did not take the necessary care, and while I do not regret you, my son, my choices vanished with your conception. This must not be with Margot. Promise me that, and I will speak to Guillaume”

Rollo looked embarrassed, but at the same time determined to be as open as he could be. “Mother, I promise. Perhaps I have not made it clear to all, and I know she is yet young, but that woman I love with all that I have, as I love you, and my sister here; and not forgetting that if it were not for Sophie, I may never have met Maggy. I have debts, I have duties. They shall be honoured”

Three of us embraced.

Monday morning was cold, and I boarded the bus wrapped in many layers of wool. The girls were there as ever, and it was with amusement that I saw that Margot retained her gloves. Small matters were spoken of, until the doors opened to admit our boys, and seats were exchanged for knees and kisses. That was when Margot winked at me and removed her gloves.

There was a piercing shriek from Elle, and then a crowd formed around our seats as everybody fought to catch sight of her ring. Matty laughed.

“That means we have one girl off limits now, Benoit!”

Elle turned to give him a very black look. “Only one girl is not off limits to you, and that is this one!”

Benoit smiled again. “I don’t care who’s off limits. I have what I want right here”

The bus was stopping, so we had to disembark, which meant that the kiss I gave him was before the whole school. Margot was not the only one off limits.

CHAPTER 21
That was the end of winter as far as I was concerned. The actual weather around me was not relevant, because I had that smile to come to each day, and the two months that led to my birthday were filled with laughter and great silliness. It seemed that once I had shown the world whose he was, his shyness evaporated, and there was a curious reaction from the other girls.

It seems that when something is taken by one person, others then perceive it as desirable, and wish it for themselves. All the time my Benoit had been treated so badly by those girls, he had been unwanted. The fickle did not desire him because the popular looked the length of their noses at him. Too big, too clumsy, too blond, all of that childishness. Now that he was being seen with me there was a rush of declarations that he had always been liked, that particular girls would be better for him than that tall one with neither bosom nor behind but a nose that was bigger than what she lacked.

I first heard of this from Elle. “You must hear this, Sophie! That Nicolette Jeunet, the bitch, she has said things to Benoit, and Matty told me the words. She said to him that he must have odd tastes, because you are like a stick dried in the sun, and why else would he be with you instead of with someone with a proper woman’s shape, and Benoit, Matty says, he said that he would rather watch your behind, in trousers, than some haunches so fat they quivered when she walked, and then Matty said, he said I don’t know, Benny, you could always slap the fat and ride upon the waves”

I found myself laughing and blushing all at the same time. “Elle, slow down! You will not forget everything if you don’t tell it all at once. My Benoit, he said this? And Matthieu, he was with him?”

“Well….”

I held my hand up. “Short answer, please”

She grinned, and nodded. “Yes. Sophie, we are lucky girls, no? To have such men for our own?”

“Indeed we are, little one, indeed we are. And Margot too. We must think of some way of thanking our handsome---no, Elle, that is not what I meant! You are obsessed!”

“No I am not! I just know what I like, and he knows I like it”

Oh. “You have not, you know, that?”

“Oh no, Sophie, not that, no! But there are other games one can play, and I do not mean tormenting the poor boy with frustration. You can…”

Elle proceeded to explain in great and lurid detail what games she meant, and I was so hot in the face I thought my head would burst open. When words came back to me, I had to ask.

“These things, you have done them?”

There was a hint of a blush in her face. “One of them, yes. With my hand. I really do not know if I could do the other things”

“But, Elle, those things, they are all for his pleasure, and not yours, no?”

Her grin reignited. “In some ways, yes, but it is the control that you have that is your gratification. They are so easy just then, so domesticated”

“Elle, I cannot do such things. Think, just imagine, if Benoit should reach between my legs with his hand, what he might say or do”

“Then do not let him. And if you place yourself so that those parts are beyond his reach…but always keep a paper tissue to hand”

“You are incorrigible!”

“No, just happy. What shall we do for the boys and their chivalry?”

“Perhaps the cinema? The film will not matter, because you will not see it”

She grinned in a wicked way. “Neither, I think, will you!”

So it was that we travelled once more into the city one Friday in March, and I made sure that I wore a thick undergarment and a jean. I cannot remember the film that we were to see, but it was of little importance, because what mattered was my company. The lights dimmed, Elle and Matty began to devour each other as was their way, and I settled against my big man. At first, I merely leant upon his shoulder, but then I turned in his embrace so that I could place my hand on his chest. He was wearing a real shirt, with buttons, and I loosened one so that my hand could reach inside.

There were hairs, and some softness over the muscle, and I found myself drawing my fingers through the little forest. Benoit sighed, and brought my face to his, and he was a little more forceful than of normal. There was a tongue, and then his hand moved to my breast. I broke away from the kiss to whisper to him.

“Not all of that is real, Benny”

“I don’t care. I merely wish to do something nice to the parts that are”

He in turn loosened one of my buttons, and then his hand squirmed awkwardly, and somehow lifted my support from over my breast, taking with it the rabbit-flesh until his fingers found what was part of me, and then I was transported. I had only been taking my medicines for about half of one year, but they had changed parts of me in that time, and the one thing that had altered was my sensitivity in the place he had found. I had to kiss him to keep myself from making noises.

We stayed like that for what seemed both an eternity and no time at all, until Benny withdrew his hand and began to move it to that place I dreaded. I almost felt like laughing, as I pulled his hand back to the place I had previously denied, but I could not take that risk, and besides it was very, very pleasurable. Kisses, and intimate caresses, what delight.

I realised that Benoit was getting aroused, and at that some devil came to me, and I let my hand fall from his chest to the place I had denied him on my own body, and I found that Elle’s powers of observation were very good. It was enormous. I could feel the length of it, caught in his jean, and as I touched it, as gently as I could, it moved, and Benny made a groan and pushed my hand down hard. It was so much bigger than my unwanted flesh, and from what I had seen as a brother to Roland, it was far larger than his, and I felt a small moment of triumph over my sister-in-law-to-be before reminding myself that it was I who lacked.

The devil still lived in me, however, and I reached for first the button, and then the zip, and then thanked Providence that he did not wear a jean that fitted close to his skin, because---

Because I could get my hand in, and touch it, and I felt my heart beating as strongly as the pulse I could feel in his piece. And I can say no more and yet be decent, but Elle had been correct in her advice about paper tissues, and as I felt what happened, I thought.

How could anyone do that other thing she had described, with all that happened as Benoit shook in my hand? And yet, his obvious pleasure, the excitement I brought him, it simply made me wish to do more and more for this boy, and it was at that exact point, as I held a tissue to his penis, that I realised I was in love with him. Not just fond, not just sexually excited by him, but thinking of how life might be if we were to follow the trail blazed by my brother and Margot. In love, indeed, and yet there remained the fact that I could do nothing more than I had for him. I certainly could not give him children.

So I kissed him again, and he clothed his lower parts once more, and I tried not to weep.

CHAPTER 22
The Spring came, and far too quickly ran into the beginning of Summer, and that was when I found myself with too much work to do for mooning over boys and their pieces. There were assessments to sit, assignments to write and so much study that I thought I might find pieces of the books leaking from my ears. That was the time I began absolutely to love my giant blond, for he simply left me to study when I needed to, and kissed me when I did not. He was also working very hard to dispose of the extra mass that clothed his frame, and he looked the better for it.

Elle seemed to be so much quieter now, and I realised that she and Matty had found a similar bond to myself. There was no longer the need to devour each other, and they were calmer, but still touching when they could, and I do not mean in those places. Margot…

Margot had blossomed. I do not know whether it was her engagement, or what I suspected to be very regular lovemaking with Rollo, but there had come a new maturity to her that was reflected in her carriage and her confidence. She seemed, in her movements, to make a declaration: ‘I have arrived’.

“Margot, what are your plans after next year?”

“After the Bacca? We shall be married, of course”

“So soon?”

“Not soon, my little sister-in-law-to-be; it will have been over a year and a half, nearly two years”

“But what about University?”

She smiled. “Ah, Rollo and I have talked, Sophie, and he is insistent, as am I. He will not accept that I go to become a housewife. He says that I will be sensible, I will study, become more than just a wife. So…I have looked at the prospectus, and it is possible”

“To do what?”

“I marry my sweet man, and then we wait for just three years before our first child, and I go to the university in Caen. I want to study mathematics”

“First child?”

“Oh, yes, we want a house full of children! I have always---oh, my sweet, I forgot. I forget too easily. I am sorry”

She understood me too well. I was Sophie, as if I had never been any other way, and my breasts were growing, my shape changing, and I was kissing a beautiful boy, but in the end I could never follow Margot’s course. She took my hand, a tear standing in her eye.

“My friend, you are so much a woman it is easy to forget. Perhaps, one day…”

I embraced her, and thought of Benny.

Work, so much of it, and rows of seats and little tables for our tests, and weeks without the chance to go to the cinema, or perhaps to the sea for a bowl of mussels or an ice cream. Rollo, too, was finding there was much work to do, as the tourists began to build in number with the warming of the weather. Maman came in one day, and asked the question over a family meal, just the three of us.

“Well, my children, shall we be July or August people? I have the chance to take one or the other this year, so which will we be?”

Roland stroked his moustache, I think to disguise his expression. “I cannot, this year. We have no gaps left for my leave of absence, and so…”

Maman laughed. “And so you would rather spend the time with some Norman girl, no?”

Roland smiled. “And you would not with a Norman girl’s father?”

Our mother blushed. “Perhaps I would. Perhaps, next year, we may travel in family, unless you have other plans?”

I smiled. “Talking to Margot, I rather think he may have a different sort of month in mind, one with honey involved. Not true, brother?”

My big brother, with his uniform, and his stick and his gun, my brother was himself reddening. I reached out to him.

“Margot spoke to me, about her plans, your dreams. She would be married to you yesterday, if it were possible or sensible. She will wait, though; sit for her Bacca, and then carry you to the Mairie herself, and probably the next Saturday if she can arrange it. So, Maman, what were you thinking?”

Maman gathered her thoughts. “I have looked at this, and it is true that we have enough income now to be comfortable, but that is because my son is working so hard. It would not be right to use his money for two people to have a holiday”

Rollo laughed out loud. “You say, that, Mother? This rubbish comes from the mouth of the woman who bore me, fed me, clothed me, comforted me for so many years? From the woman who held us together as a family even when the whoreson sperm donor went to rut with that bitch from down the street? You are so lacking in intelligence?”

“Your language, my son”

He took a breath. “Sorry, Maman, but it is true. You are my mother. There is no way I can ever repay you in any adequate way for what you have done for me, for my sister, all these years. This man here, this cop, this is from you. All that I am is from you. All that Sophie and I have, is from you. And I should begrudge you some time in the sun?”

She was crying, now, and we took hands across the table. “How did you become what you are, with what went into you?”

He smiled. “You made me, Maman. So: where is it you were thinking of going? You would not mention something like this without a plan, for I know you too well”

She wiped her eyes. “Argelá¨s. It will be a long ride on the train, but there is an hotel there, and my boss has a cousin who runs it, and we have a deal possible. I spend one day helping with the kitchen, one day a week when they are busiest, and we get a cheaper holiday”

Rollo laughed out loud, once more. “See? Even in the busiest, most expensive days of the year, our mother finds the little rabbit-holes to slip through! Would Sophie perhaps be required to help?”

“A little tidying of the other rooms…just for an hour each day, I would help”

“What did we do to deserve such a devious and wonderful mother?”

“Ah, Rollo, Sophie: you were born. That is all a mother needs. Oh, and Margot will NOT live here for the holidays. Guillaume is taking her to Annecy”

Once more, he laughed. “Did I not say she was devious, sister?”

One morning, then, in August, Maman and I found ourselves on the train from Caen, and after a chaotic transfer in Paris we were finally on the TGV heading towards the noon. Benoit had been emotional, but then we had had time on the beach, time in the cinema, time in quiet places for him to touch my breasts and for me to do things for him. It was sex, in a way, but I felt sure that it was more than that for both of us. I loved him more each day, and I trusted that he felt the same way about me, and though I still had to control where he placed his hands he was not forceful when he tried to go there. I had decided to discard my pieces of rabbit flesh, and thus all was me, all was sensitive. He had insisted on seeing us on departure from the station, and with my mother nearby he had been reticent and shy, so I had simply pulled him to me, and before my mother’s eyes gave him a real kiss. She smiled, but said nothing, merely averting her eyes. He still squeezed my behind as I boarded the train, however.

And so the train sped south, at nearly 300 kilometres per hour, and Maman unpacked the food she had prepared for us as the countryside rolled past. Through Lyon and into Avignon, where we changed, the light getting brighter with each kilometre, and I felt the heat as we left the controlled climate of the train. To Narbonne, then, past the place from where comes my mother’s favourite soup, and we paused by the lagoon for a while. I looked out into the distance, where there was a cloud of white on the shoreline.

“Maman, are they perhaps flamingos over there?”

She laughed happily. “My sweet, lower your eyes. By the train track”

I felt foolish. I was searching the far distance for the strange birds and yet there, just outside our window, almost at my feet, were a dozen or more.

“Sophie, that is a lesson for you. Sometimes, things can look impossibly far away, so far that you cannot grasp them. If, just then, you pause, and look around you, there may be what you need closer to hand, unnoticed. Now, we must make another connection in Narbonne, and then it will be the slow train. My map shows that we must go through a lot of water, so be ready to look for more birds”

The station at Narbonne was dirty, and hot, and I did not like sitting for so long with our baggage, but finally we boarded our last train. Maman was right, and it took us on a long and slow ride through marsh and lagoon, bamboo and long grasses waving in a wind as white birds she called cattle-guardians pecked around the feet of the black cows. I saw one standing on the back of one beast as we slowly passed. And then we were there, the heat more than I had expected, but a wind still blowing. We took our suitcases from the station, blessing the fact that they had wheels, and made our way through a grid of streets to the hotel, La Cheminée, which was almost Spanish in its style, with a shaded courtyard for meals. Maman made herself known.

“Julienne and Sophie Laplace. We are expected?”

“Ah! Henri said! I am Thierry; welcome to my little place. Have you eaten, do you have thirst?”

“We ate on the trains, but a cold drink would be very pleasant. My daughter and I, we are not accustomed to this heat”

“Ah, it is cooler than usual today. But, look, we shall put things away, you can have time to unpack, perhaps take the swimming costumes and inspect our beach, and then tonight, it is Friday, so we have cargolade!”

I was immediately reminded of my tiny friend in his energy and size, for he was shorter than me, dark, and quite plump. “Upstairs, room fourteen, here is the key. Breakfast is from seven-thirty for two hours, and…Julienne? May I show you the kitchen when you return?”

“Of course. Come, Sophie”

Thierry insisted on helping us with Maman’s bag, and then mine, and in a few minutes we were hanging clothes and I was moving in haste.

“Yes you can”

“Pardon, Maman?”

“Yes you may go straight to the sea. Just remember to be careful in your costume”

I undressed in the bathroom, and put on the elastic garment Elle’s Maman had found for me, feeling everything squash away, and then the costume my own mother had settled on, which had a little skirt. I grabbed a towel for the beach, after throwing a sun dress over my collection, and was about to run out of the door when she called me back.

“Four things, my sweet! Hat, sunglasses, and this”

She rubbed my arms with sun lotion. “You can do the rest yourself”

“You said four things, Maman?”

“I did”

She turned her cheek to me. “A kiss for your mother?”

How could I refuse?

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.

Blue, low waves coming onto the sand and white seabirds diving for fish. There were a lot of people sitting or lying on towels or mats made of reeds, and there were breasts everywhere, naked and looking oddly unfinished. I could not understand why women would do such a thing; my breasts were my own, such as they were, mine and Benny’s, of course, and not for the gaze of any random stranger.

I heard some of the half-naked women speak, and it was clear then that they were from the Low Countries or Germany, somewhere that such nudity was common and accepted. I heard other languages, including English, but it was my own language that surprised me. I loved the Pagnol films, after all, so I was expecting the sound of Uncle Jules, the great trill as they said the letter R, for these people were Catalans. What I did not anticipate was that every vowel was wrong. It was almost like being in a foreign land, and yet all was still French, apart from rather a lot of red and yellow flags. Later, I was to see that even some of the signs for street and town names were inscribed in two languages. How odd.

I set out my towel, placing a book on it along with my sandals, and took a step towards the sea. I then stepped quickly back onto my towel with a shout. A woman of a certain age laughed at this.

“That burns, no? If your feet are tender, swim in your sandals!”

“Thank you. Is it always so hot on the feet?”

“Oh yes, but that is only this far from the water. It is better closer, and your feet will learn. This is your first time in this place?”

“Yes, Madame. I am with my mother; we stay at La Cheminée”

“A good hotel. Good food there”

“Ah, we are working there as well”

“Not a true holiday, then?”

“But yes, apart from some little tasks it is a real one. My mother is alone, so this is the easiest way to come south”

She laughed, and it was a pleasant sound. “Ah, little one, so many of these beach rabbits are campers. This coast is full of camp sites, and they in turn are full of blond people who burn in the sun and keep the chemist’s shop busy, and its owner richer than they would otherwise be. I should know, for the chemist is my son”

We shook hands. “I am Roser Borges, child. My son, Jaume, he has the shop in the main street”

“Sophie, Madame, Sophie Laplace. My mother is Julienne”

“You have what age, Sophie?”

“Seventeen years, Madame”

She shook her hands before her, as if warding off a dog. “Roser, child; you are almost a grown woman, and you are not in school at least for this month, and I am no teacher. We shall speak as friends. What work is it you will do in the hotel?”

“Just some tidying of the rooms each morning. My mother, she is a cook. I mean, she is a true mistress of the kitchen, not a potwasher”

Madame Borges–Roser–was nodding. “She does this where you live? Where is that?”

“I am a Norman girl, Roser. We live in the Calvados, on the coast”

“Ah, the accent…so you have the sand, and the sea, just rather colder, yes?”

“I do not know yet”

“Trust me, Sophie, that water over there will please you. Do you have a mask?”

“Your pardon?”

“A mask for your eyes, for under the water? No? Try these”

She handed me the sort of thing swimmers use in artificial pools. “Trust me once more, child. You will want to see underwater. Now, go and test the temperature before your day is ended! I will guard your things”

My sandals were of a simple plastic, so I did not fear for them in the sea, and Roser was of course correct: they made crossing the sand a lot more pleasant. I walked to the sea, and placed a foot into the water, expecting a chill, but it was merely cool, refreshing. I walked further in, and then decided I should plunge. I donned Roser’s goggles and in a way that was far from elegant threw myself at the water, and the world was transformed.

It was so clear! Beneath me lay ridges of sand formed by the waves, shells scattered about them, and small fish darted in groups wherever I turned my gaze. In that moment, I felt happier than I could ever remember. I was living as the person I had always known myself to be. My sweet brother was engaged to be married to someone I dearly loved. I had my own sweet man waiting for me to return. I was on holiday with my dear mother. I was floating in a warm sea, under a hot sun, in a beautiful place watching fish swim around me. I stood up in the water, delighted, and then heard a drone from an engine.

A small aircraft was flying along the beach, towing an enormous banner, which revealed itself to be nothing but an advertisement for a large supermarket. Even in Paradise, it seemed, there were serpents. Eventually, I emerged from the sea, and Roser tutted once more.

“Girl, you must put cream on your skin or you will spoil your holiday on the first day! Come here, let me”

“I cannot ask you to–“

“I am a mother and a grandmother, and I have done this for many young people. Hold still…ah, is that your mother I see in the broad hat?”

I looked up, and Maman was walking the sand towards where I sat. “Yes, it is. How did you know?”

“She resembles you more than a little, but also she is very pale, like you, in the skin. Hola!”

My mother reached us, and I saw that her hands were red. She followed my gaze.

“It is nothing, my sweet; I just wish that any cooking I do is done in things that are clean. You have made a friend?”

“Roser Borges; I am of the corner. My son has the chemist’s shop. You are Madame Laplace, no? Your daughter is a delight, so polite, and…”

She made a shrug of her shoulders that encompassed every woman or girl near us, who were mostly clad in nothing more than the tiniest of bikinis, or bare-breasted, and also my own rather fuller costume. “…so modest”

“Julienne, Madame, please”

“And Roser, of course. How do you come to our little piece of Mallorca? And please do not say ‘by train’!”

I had to interrupt. “Mallorca?”

Roser smiled. “Did you think you were in France here? No, this is Catalunya, Rrrrroussillon. This was the Kingdom of Mallorrrrca, and my son, he has the name given to some of our kings. Their palace is in Perrrrrpignan”

I looked at her as sternly as I could manage. “You are doing it deliberately, that thing with the Rs! Otherwise you would have said your name was Rrrrroserrrr!”

“Clever girl! And you say them so well we shall make of you a Catalane!”

Maman smiled. “How do you do it, my little one? You walk onto a strange beach, in a faraway town, and already you have a friend. Just as you did when you went to your new school. Roser, is she at all a bother?”

“No, but she will cost you money”

“Your pardon?”

I held up the goggles Roser pointed to. “I would like very much a pair of these, Maman”

Roser grinned. “But not a swimming costume of cobweb and postage stamps? Ah, there is yet hope for the world. What do you do for Thierry?”

Maman smiled. “I work for his cousin, so that with just some help for making of the beds in the morning, and three nights of each week to cook, we have a comfortable place to sleep. The cooking here, it interests me. I would do a full aíoli one evening, Friday of course”

“Allioli, Julienne; the other is Provençal mahonnaise with garlic. And there is pa amb oli, of course, and pa amb tomá quet, and cargolade, and, oh, so much more! A true cook must have her own recipe for the breads”

I had to ask. “What is this cargolade? We are to be served it tonight”

“Ah, child, that is for the tourists, but it is still a delight! You have, of course, the allioli, and the bread and olives, and some sausage, perhaps of the wild boar, or the fighting bull, or even the ass, and meat for the barbeque, which should be of vine branches, and then the main thing is lots and lots of snails for the grilling”

“Snails?”

“Yes. Mostly small snails, and perhaps some rabbit. You will enjoy!”

Maman laughed. “I do not think I am quite as familiar with snails as my own tourists think, nor with frogs. I have only cooked the big snails, from the Bourgogne. Now, it gets late, and this child has still to unpack fully"

“Maman, I …”

“My girl, you unpacked enough to find your costume and a pretty dress. Now, we will say that we hope to see you soon, Roser. Thank you for your kindness to my child”

I gave back the swimming goggles and Maman and I walked hand in hand after I had put on my dress.

“Sophie…this is hard to put the proper words too, but I watch you, like this, and I tell myself how blind I have been. Everything you do is as a girl would”

“That is because I am one, Maman”

“I know, my sweet, I know. But look at your life now: did you ever make friends as Serge? Did you ever speak with strangers as you do now? No, it pleases me so much to see my child happy, and it tells me that I did not lose my son, she merely awoke from a nightmare. Sophie: this will be a wonderful holiday, no?”

I embraced her. “It already is, Maman. I just need to do one thing”

She laughed. “There is a booth on the corner of our street. Do not use it all in one call”

I was handed a telephone card. “Call him just before dinner, so that you have to keep the call a short one. I will speak with your brother myself”

An hour later: “Hello, Benny---are you missing me?”

CHAPTER 24
That month flew through our hands. Each morning, we would take our breakfast with the more normal hotel guests, and then I would join some older women for the making of beds and tidying of rooms. The work was not hard, only an hour or two each morning, and then we were free. Maman prepared meals three nights each week, and when I visited her in the kitchen I finally saw the respect my mother had earned. She was no potwasher, no servant, but the chief and director. Thierry smiled at me when I showed my surprise.

“Your mother, she has a talent, a gift from the Lord, Sophie. This was my gift from Henri: we have a number of things that we serve to our customers, but your mother has others, new ideas to amuse the mouth. And, perhaps, she can take our own dishes with her”

Maman laughed at that. “So he says, but I still have to master the allioli. Your Benoit will need to become accustomed to the taste of garlic!”

I pushed her arm. “And Guillaume too?”

I had seen my mother go each evening before dinner to Thierry’s office, where he had a computer, and I suspected she was having conversations using the internet. She had also purchased a digital camera, and I am sure the photographs were being sent with the words.

Photographs we now had in great plenty, pictures of the beach and of the mountains, especially of the Canigou. One day Maman took me by train through Collioure to a tiny and shabby town called Cerbá¨re, where we walked down a tunnel onto the beach from the railway station. There was a cement path leading around the rocks of its bay to a beach of grit, and then Maman puzzled out a dirty path that led us past cactus plants that looked like something from an American cowboy film. It was steep, and the weather was hot, but we arrived at the road again, my basketball shoes having done their job. There was a view to the South, rocky promontories reaching out into the blue sea. Maman embraced me.

“My sweet, that is Spain. Without an identity card to say who you are, we cannot go there, so I thought you should at least be able to look at another country”

“But I have my CNI with me!”

“Yes, my little one, but what does it say about you, eh? If you were to show it to a Spanish flic, or worse, someone like your brother when we returned?”

“Ah”

“I would not risk spoiling our time here. It is a precious thing”

I understood what she was saying. I had become so accustomed to being myself, ignoring that little bit of flesh that seemed increasingly to have no importance, that I would sometimes forget it was there. I wanted it gone, of course, but away from Benny the urgency decreased. I felt once more then like Moses had, looking over to the Promised Land. I laughed.

“You do know you are the most wonderful mother one could ever desire?”

She smiled. “I do my best”

“Then I shall spend some of my money and we shall have ices on the beach!”

Happy times indeed. We spent most afternoons on the other beach near the hotel, and I was getting very bronzed. Roser was there most days, and as I now had my own mask for swimming she came out into the water with me to show me things. Once, in the rocks where the mountains stepped down into the sea, she pointed down.

“Can you see all those empty shells there on the bottom?”

“Yes”

“There is a pop there, they eat the crustaceans and leave the shells”

“Pop?”

“Octopus. Very nice on the plank, or with potatoes. Take a breath and swim down”

He was there, one eye looking at me from a hole in the rocks, and so charming. I know some people think they are ugly or dangerous, but I felt kinship with him. Or her. We left him alone, and I resolved never to eat such a dish if offered it.

There were evenings away from the hotel, too, for Roser insisted that we must dine with her and her family. Happy times, with Maman and our new friend breaking all the rules of entertainment of guests, because my mother ended up in the kitchen as a pupil. We lay in our beds after the first dinner, and as Maman said goodnight she actually giggled. “When we get back, Henri is going to have to change all of his menus. But from where shall I obtain the necessary ingredients?"

“Food parcels, Maman. As with the prisoners of war, we will ask for the Red Cross to send us packages of all the necessary items”

There was silence from her for a few moments. “Sometimes, Sophie, you say things in which you do not fully see the truth. This place…this place is like freedom for a prisoner, and home, will it not feel just a little more confined?”

I reached across the space between our beds for her hand. “We have family, Maman, and we have friends, and then we have the dream of our next visit, and perhaps, one time, I shall be able to wear the cobwebs and postage stamps”

“These young girls are all the same! Good night my dear one”

Still the days flew, and I had my talk each evening with my Benny, and asked Maman if she could send some of her pictures to him as well as Roland and Guillaume. Even in Annecy, that man could read her messages, due to the internet, and it was better than a postal card, but I still sent several. They are something that can be held and cherished, unlike the pictures and writing on a computer screen.

And then it was the final day, and our cases were taken with us all the way to Narbonne by Roser in her car, to spare us the hot and slow ride across the lagoons, which I actually wanted to take but kept my silence about. There were many people travelling, and the station was crowded, but we found a space to say good byes, and as Roser hugged me she simply whispered “You were never a boy, not really”

I went stiff, and she kissed my cheek. “Do not worry, my sweet friend. You cannot fill such a prescription without the chemist knowing, and he is my son. When we next meet, perhaps you will be entire?”

Such kindness, and I thought of what Maman had said about Serge, how only Sophie could speak to strangers and make such friends, and the train bore us away with our tears. Connections at Avignon, at Paris; cooler air, even some rain at Caen, and then my brother at the station. I was shocked to see his eyes moist, but his embrace was strong and sure.

“How I have missed you both! We have been such a family this year, not to have you for a month is a torment. Sophie…you have been eating much garlic?”

Laughter took us all home. We had dinner that evening with Margot and her Papa, at their house, and the love that shone around the room made my heart fly. Margot and Roland, of course, and Guillaume I caught with Maman embracing in the kitchen in a very, very close way. I decided I must speak with her on the subject, and as we put the house to its own sleep that night I entered her room.

“Maman, can we talk?”

“Of course, my sweet. What concerns you?”

“Margot’s Papa”

“Ah”

“Maman, I am not upset! I think it is wonderful. Margot said…she said she needed to marry Rollo before you married her father, for otherwise it would get very complicated, so we have seen how you are, and it is not a problem for us because he is a very nice man and–“

“Slowly, my sweet, slowly. Yes, Guillaume is a very nice man, but he is still in mourning, no?”

“That is it, Maman, you are not being slow. I…heard, that night, the night of the betrothal”

“Sit down, my sweet, sit down. You think this old woman is rushing too quickly after a man? You should know that we have known each other for a very long time. Yes we made love again that night”

“Again? You have been doing this for some time?”

“Now and again, for about eighteen years, my sweet”

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”

My mother’s pause just then said far more to me than any words could have. Eighteen years ago. My age, of seventeen, and add to it nine months.

“Guillaume, then…”

“Come into the bed with me, Sophie. I cannot talk face to face about this, but perhaps, as a story for bedtime, as Roland did…”

I changed to my bedclothes, as did my mother, and I crept into her bed and under the duvet, to rest my head on her shoulder in her embrace. As a tiny child, I listened to my mother’s bedtime story.

“There was, one time, a queen”

Her voice trembled slightly. “The queen had not always been such, of course, but she had met a handsome prince, and she was very young, and not the most sensible of girls, and the prince liked to feast and roister. She grew very, very fond of him, despite his frivolity, and felt that she had found the man of her dreams. One morning, however, the princess, for that was what she was, awoke to find that she had been robbed of her maidenhood following too much wine. That was the end of her virtue, because her friend did not come for her the next month, and not the month after.

“This was a time long ago and far away, and things were done differently. The princess could not live in peace with a child and no father, and she loved the prince, so they were married before that child could show too much, and thus they became king and queen of a tiny kingdom in a tower in Caen. I say ‘king’, because…”

Her voice broke, and I felt the tears coming down from her cheeks. I tightened my embrace.

“Because he believed that he was the ruler of everything. All that entered the kingdom was his, and he never brought anything himself, apart from…”

I felt sobs breaking within her, and waited patiently.

“Apart from the baby, who was born a little time later, and was a handsome and noble prince despite the baseness of his father, who soon turned to beating the queen whenever he was frustrated at the gaming tables or in the taverns he haunted”

“Rollo…”

“Yes, my sweet, Now hush. This is not an easy thing. The queen was unhappy on her throne, though she loved her new prince with everything she held within her. One day, then, as she walked with the boy to his school before going to the place where she had to work as a slave to bring home the wealth that went straight back out to the tavern, she met a handsome merchant. He was tall, and courteous, and complimented her on the prince…”

Maman was now weeping steadily, her voice breaking at some words. I clung to her in our distress, for my own tears were flowing.

“And the queen, so lonely, so hurt, was flattered by his attentions of the handsome merchant, and yet she remained a foolish woman, because once more her friend disappeared that month, and for eight more. The merchant knew of this, and begged the queen to divorce from the king and join with the merchant, and that was the third stupidity of that silly young girl.

“She had listened to the Father, and marriage was marriage, so she said that she could not. The merchant was kind, and handsome, and in his despair he had no difficulties in quickly finding another princess to ease his sorrow…and…”

She paused, and her voice changed. “And after all that, the drunken piece of shit runs off with that whore from the PMU, and if only…”

There was a cry of rage from her, and shortly thereafter Rollo came into the bedroom.

“It is all right, brother. I will explain in the morning. Please?”

He just nodded, and left us slowly. ‘Brother’. Clearly not fully so, in blood, but in everything else, my brother. That could never be stolen from me.

“Maman…”

“You can forgive me, my sweet child?”

“Maman…without the sperm donor, there would be no Rollo, and the world would be poorer, no? Do we not love him more than life?”

“Oh my God, yes!”

“And then look at Margot, yes? If you had gone with Guillaume, what would Rollo have done?”

“There are other girls…”

“Do not speak such idiocy! You can truly see Rollo with another?”

She squeezed me tight. “No, not now, my darling one. You are right. It is just, twice I did that thing, and…you forget another thing, something else so precious to a mother, and that is her daughter. I am just so shamed by this, and I do not know how I may make it right”

“Guillaume…Father…Papa knows of all this?”

“Yes, he does. When Margot met you that first day, he was confused, but then she explained when she had found the truth in you, and Guillaume…all he said to me was that if he was given any talents in life, they were the ability to sire beautiful daughters and to find wonderful women to love, and that he had managed two of each. Sophie, you must promise me. Margot is not to know of this until her papa feels that it is the correct time. Do I have your promise?”

I embraced her as tightly as I could. “What else could I do? I have one question, though: would you marry my father?”

“Oh dear Lord in heaven, as soon as he asked me! Oh my sweet, you do understand: these are not wasted years, for you are right, they have brought us Margot. Now, school in a few days, and then we shall have them both here for dinner, yes? We can practise the allioli and the pa amb whatever. And…oh, darling, you will be eighteen so soon, and…”

Her voice was uncertain, but I knew of what she spoke, and it was the surgery.

“Yes, Maman, I do want it. I would go to University as a whole person if it is possible”

She laughed out loud, relief in her voice. “You do realise that a little over a year ago I could not have imagined that? My child, my baby, at University? Have you chosen?”

I made myself more comfortable, and then thought. “Maman, I would talk of it, but first, you and I will rise from this bed and wash our faces like sensible women, no?”

She laughed again. “And you would pass the night in my bed?”

I smiled at my dear mother. “Of course; where else would I be as safe?”

Shortly after we settled down for the rest of the night.

“Maman, I would like to study English. I think I have the talent for it, and Madame Calvet agrees. We examined a number of prospectuses together, and we made a list of the ones we thought best. It is amazing, and amusing, which ones we chose as perhaps the best for me. One was Caen…”

“And would the other be somewhere warmer?”

My mother began tickling me, laughing as she did.

“Stop! Stop! Yes, you are right!”

“There is no University in Argelá¨s!”

“But there is one in Perpignan, Maman. I am being truthful; we made those choices before we went there. It was just Fate, surely?”

“And we just happen to meet somebody to be your new grandmother while you are there? Do you perhaps make appointments on the telephone with Fate? That being said, why not here, at home?”

I lay quiet for nearly a minute, gathering my thoughts. “Maman, this is my chance for a completely new beginning. I go to Perpignan, especially if things can be arranged for…my piece early, and it is all fresh. The people I know there are all friends of Sophie. Nobody has heard of Serge”

I knew that not to be true; Roser had clearly guessed, and that had been due to my stupidity in taking the doctor’s note with me instead of requesting a supply of the hormones that would have sufficed for a month. I gathered breath.

“Maman, in Caen there would always be the chance of an encounter with people who have known me in the past, known Serge, rather. I would not be complete, I would be vulnerable. A new place, a new start”

Her voice was gentle. “Dear sweet one, problems must be faced at some time, not run from”

“Yes, I know, and I will face them, but I will do so when I am strong and confident, and that will be when…things have been removed from me. Can you understand that? I must dispose of one enemy before I can face the others”

She kissed me, and I slept in my mother’s warmth for the first time in what seemed an eternity.

Rollo was gone in the morning, for work with an early start. In only two days’ time I would enter once more into routine, and then, astonishingly, we would be heading again for a Christmas as a family, our second in our new home. Not so new any more, of course. Christmas, Spring, time to work what persuasions I could on Mme Chinon and pray to the Lord that there would be a decision in my favour, and a bed in a hospital for me.

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!”

I laughed aloud, and slapped her arm gently. “I come back, of my own will, to this insanity? And your boy just mounting the bus?”

“A girl can look, and this one does! Anyway, your boy is also here”

Her chatter ceased abruptly as her mouth was obstructed, but then mine was similarly blocked. I smiled up at my blond. “Did you miss me?”

“Did I not tell you that every evening? Why the telephone in the booth?”

“Benny, you are aware how much a mobile telephone call can cost? Maman gave me a series of cards so that I would know how much I had to pay. She said I would learn control”

Elle pulled back for a moment. “She said she was looking at the boys on the beach!”

“No I did not! I said I met a nice lady. Elle, you are evil in a very short measure”

“But am I not also amusing and delightful? Matty, am I amusing and delightful?”

“You amuse and delight me, Elle”

“See? I am right!”

There was an ease between them that charmed me. Then again, I had my great big boy beside me, and then sat beneath me as I moved from a set on the bus to a perch on his thighs, and all too soon we were at the school and once more showing everyone we were joined just as we parted for the classes. I had been looking carefully at Margot, when I thought she did not see, trying to see anything in her face that was similar to my own features. Perhaps, just a few places; the nose, maybe, but that was also her father’s…our father’s. But then I had to watch Benny as he left, happy to see him from behind knowing that I would soon see him again from in front.

Mme Calvet caught up with me later, just as I was about to leave her room for another class.

“How did you find the far South, Sophie? Ah, such a smile! It was that wonderful?”

I laughed. “Apart from the making up of beds every morning, but that was only an hour, and Maman did not tell my brother the exact truth about how many evenings she had to work”

My teacher laughed. “But then, hoteliers remain businessmen, and I am sure he got more than the value of the room from your mother and you. We must talk properly of this. Did you mention your plans to your mother, about University?”

“Yes, last night. I believe I have decided upon Perpignan”

She nodded. “Yes. Too many people who have known you in Caen”

Oh dear. “You…you are aware of my problem?”

She put a hand to my shoulder. “I know only that I have a girl in my class who had an unfortunate childhood, but who I hope will have a remarkable future. Do not worry. Now, you have another class; run! We will talk of University later”

We sat with our boys and our lunch in the warm September sun. Elle was still curious about the boys of the beaches, and so I told her stories of very tall boys from Scandinavia and the Low Countries, blonds of firm bodies and minute bathing costumes, and she pretended to salivate to make Matty upset, but he just sighed and turned to Benny to talk about football. Men…

“So, what have you decided for next year?”

“Eh? Sorry, Margot, I was just dreaming”

“Danish boys, I bet!”

“No, Elle, about University. I am thinking very hard about Perpignan, to do the English. It is a lovely place”

Fatima sighed. “Mother does not like the idea of my going. I should meet a nice man, marry, have children”

“And you do not want this?”

She smiled in delight. “Oh yes, of course! But there is more to life, and Papa says that if the Almighty has given me a mind, I should make the best use of it. So…is it a silly idea, for me, to want to teach?”

Margot leant towards her. “No. You have a good heart, and that would be right for you. And besides…”

She paused, just for a second. “Do it before you have any children of your own. Schoolchildren are returned at the end of classes each day; your own, you must suffer all the time!”

Elle waited for the end of laughter. “And Margot? You would have how many?”

“We have decided, Elle, we have chosen a time, not an actual day, but a time. We shall sit our Bacca and if all goes well I shall continue to Caen, and study mathematics. In between, my man shall marry me. Children will come later, but my beloved says that I will not waste my talents too young”

I knew Roland’s mind on that: he remembered how Maman had been able only to show her talents in the kitchen, and that only recently. What might our mother have become if she had not met our father?

His father. Not mine, not ever. I resolved that I would do what I could to help Maman and her Handsome Merchant to make their second chance work properly. This was her Fate, come to call a second time.

“Margot, you are with us on Sunday?”

She smiled, and once more I could see her mature beauty shining past the adolescent. “I am to be married to a man; is it not traditional to share meals with his family?”

Elle laughed. “Yes, and then there is your father and his mother…”

Fatima raised her head. “This is true?”

I made a sign for yes with my head. “It is. I think…I think they are in much the same position as Margot”

With a very serious frown, Elle asked, “Is this true? We must be told. Is it like the dogs, or perhaps face to face, or sixty-“

As one, we all shouted her name, and she stopped, giggling. Fatima raised her hands. “No, no, and Elle, you know absolutely that is not what I meant. Sophie, Margot’s papa is free, sadly. I do not mean that in a bad way, but we all still remember how horrible it was for dear Margot. What I am saying is…has your maman done anything about your father?”

“Sperm donor”

There was a snort from Elle, and another from Matty. Fatima sighed. “No, my little friend, a divorce, or other ending of the marriage. How long has it been?”

“Nine years since he went with that woman. Never a word, certainly not a sou. As far as I am concerned, he does not exist”

“Yes, Sophie, but as far as the law is concerned is what you must consider. Look, my brother, he is an advocate, yes? I will ask. There must be ways to finish such things. We have, after all, abandonment and adultery, just for things to begin with. There will be more”

Once more, those thoughts, the words of maman: Serge could never have been like this, had never had friends who not only smiled for him, not only shared his troubles, but actively sought ways to remove them. I began to cry, and Elle came to hold me just a second before Benny. She took a paper tissue to my eyes.

“Why, Sophie? Why the tears?”

“It is just…I love you all so much, yet I do not know what I have done to deserve such fortune”

“By being yourself, my sweet. Just by being yourself”

Margot reached across and took my hand with her left, the ring sparkling. “This is not exactly a small matter, my sister-to-be”

That was when I very nearly broke my promise, for she was no sister-to-be but an actual sister in fact. I bit down on my treacherous tongue before it could betray my mother’s trust.

That evening, before Maman was home, Rollo sat with me and asked what had been the drama of the night before, and that was when I felt that my mother’s confidence had been upheld sufficiently. We sat with cocas in our garden, enjoying the sun.

“Rollo, there were things said last night, and they concern you. I would simply ask that you hold your anger, if it comes, and think of all who are involved. It is easiest for me if I am direct and go to the heart: I had a father, not a sperm donor. He lives yet, and you know him”

“He is in Rouen with that whore”

“No…that is your father”

“You…what do you mean?”

“That is not my father”

He sat for at least two minutes without speaking. I broke the silence. “Did you know that he beat our mother?”

He looked away, lips white as his jaw tightened. “Yes, I would hear, as a child. I tried to stop him sometimes, and he would strike me, but I bit him once, in the hand, and he would then lock me out of the room he took her to, the piece of a cunt. It was well he left, for I would have killed him in the end, for maman, for our mother, yes? I met him again two years ago…

“I was in Caen, in the centre, near the cold meats, and he was there, and as ever he had been drinking enough to forget who he was, and what he had done, and what he had made me, and he tried to act as if I was his son and friend. So I took him to a quiet door, and I put my service arm to his jewels and told him that if I ever saw him again they would come off one by one, and how lucky he was to have been able to lock the door in our house because I was ready to do it then with a knife from the kitchen. I took his hand…”

There were tears, just then. “I took his hand, where I had bit him, and I showed him the scar, and I said this scar, this is all a boy could do, but now, if you are wise, you will not seek to find out what this man could do, and I cocked my pistol, and there, in that doorway, he pissed down his leg in fear, and I told him, once more, that I would be his executioner if ever he gave me cause, and to find him upright and in my sight again would be cause enough.

“And I let him free, and he ran, and I was ashamed, and yet not so. He will not touch maman, ever again.”

I moved round our little table, and took him to me, not as a sister but as a mother, until his tears had ceased. His voice was soft.

“And your father…do I know him?”

“Yes”

“He lives yet?”

“He is Guillaume. Margot’s papa”

Suddenly, he was laughing, tears still coming.

“Whore of a brothel of shit, thank the Good Saviour that she only picked the good man the second time! Otherwise Margot and I would be completely buggered!”

I kissed him, again as a mother would her child. This was yet my brother, whom I would love till I died.

CHAPTER 27
That week Fatima was as good as her word, and on the Wednesday she explained what her brother had told her.

“Your mother can be granted a divorce on the grounds of separation, for that needs only be for two years. The problems come afterwards”

We were at our midday meal, and with my mouth filled I could only raise my eyebrows to ask the question. She twisted her mouth, as if at some sour taste.

“There is the division of everything to argue over, and then there is the custody of children. No, listen to me. It is often the case, according to Abdullah, that even when there is a long separation of the two people, one will attempt to seize any children as a weapon against the other. They do not want the children, just their use and power to hurt that other person”

I was so nearly an adult that I wanted to scream. And then, I realised: he knew nothing of our win on the lottery. Would that give him the courage that had run down his leg at Rollo’s hands? There was a lot to worry me in so few words. Fatima continued.

“Sophie, my brother, he is my big brother, like yours, and he would talk to you. He likes to pretend he is the great advocate, before the judges and the magistrates, the man in the suit of clothes and the cravat, but he is still the boy who read my stories to me, still my brother, yes? Do not let his haircut and his shoes frighten you. Oh, Elle, just for once, be serious, please? He is a good man, he is someone who still believes that there is justice, that it should be sought”

I nodded. “I must speak with Maman. This thing with the children, if she can wait, then…then I will be eighteen and the sperm donor can…well, if he has pockets, he can–“

I couldn’t say that word, but Elle’s shriek of laughter was sufficient. They understood what I meant. I found her alone that evening in the kitchen as Roland worked late.

“Maman, the girls, they ask…you and Papa. What would you do?”

Her smile was sweetly sad. “You already know the answer, my little one”

I gathered my strength. “Yes, I do. But…listen, I have not discussed our private matters with the girls, not those ones, but they see how things go with you and him, and they ask when you would wed. And…please, I must finish, Fatima, she is not stupid, and her brother is an advocate. She knows about these things. Before you and Papa, well, before that you must, we must deal with the sperm donor”

“Deal with? I need nothing from him but an ending”

“Maman, Abdullah, that is Fatima’s brother, he says that some angry couples fight over children, and property, and I am yet seventeen”

She put down the plate she had already washed six times. “The lottery. That is our vulnerable place, no? If he thinks, after nine years, well, if he has the pockets he can go and fuck himself there!”

She was trembling, staring out of the window, and I bent to hold her, realising that I was taller than her, but never, ever, stronger. I pulled her head to my breasts, MY breasts, and whispered.

“Abdullah, she says that he would speak with us, speak with you. I feel he may wish to do things for his little sister, but also for his sense of fairness. If that is true, then he must know all. About me, about Guillaume, Papa, all”

She shed tears into my blouse. “You say that word so easily, my baby. I wish things had been possible, the circumstances different. You do not say it, but you speak the sense I need. When you are eighteen, all changes. That piece of a bastard, he will have no claim on you. It is our money I fear for. This Abdullah, you trust him?”

“I have not met him, Maman, not yet, but Fatima, she is someone I trust. She has a good heart”

“Her brother: he has a wife?”

I laughed aloud. “Are you asking on behalf of me or for yourself, Maman?”

She slapped me gently on my behind as I held her. “Silly goose! It is just, if we have him to eat it would not be natural to leave any family to await his return. Speak to your friend. Perhaps this Sunday when we have both intended spouses present?”

“He has asked you then?”

“He has never needed to, my sweet. Come, let us finish this, and then we shall take a glass and find ourselves something suitably feminine to watch from the films we have”

The next morning, I asked my friend directly.

“No, he has no wife yet, though our parents are looking hard. He will bring an excellent dowry, Maman says, but my brother, he just wants the right wife, and she asks, how will you know, and he just says, I will know when I see her”

“He would eat with all of us on Sunday?”

“I will ask him”

I made my decision. “And you yourself? Would you join us? It will be we three, plus Margot and her Papa”

“Not Benny?”

“Not this time”

Not if I had to explain my life to another stranger. Not to Benny, not yet. One day, one day that I hoped would be soon, I would have the strength and the confidence to let him know about me, but not yet.

I was up very early on Sunday morning, for this would be a day that involved two things of importance. Firstly, I would be declaring myself to another adult, trusting in the faith his sister had shown me, and as well in her own love of me. Secondly, I was to acknowledge my own father. Not yet in public, and only between the man, my mother and myself, but for the first time I would be able to say those things I needed to. I could only know of a father’s love by observation: watching Elle and her Papa, Margot and Guillaume. The sperm donor was a null, a nothing. More than that, he was an empty place in my life. He did not simply lack existence as a father but left a void where such a person should stand, and I would have that space filled with life and a smile.

Maman, had decided that we would dine on lamb mice, which were always a favourite of mine, with a bowl of puy lentils, one of small carrots and another of spinach. We would eat in the sun, in our garden, and the meal would begin with some cold Spanish soup she had brought with her from the Mediterranean.

“I do not know what he can eat, my sweet, so lamb is the safest meat I can use. This is so difficult: is he, are they, allowed cheese? I remember things about Jewish food that say it is not allowed”

I realised that I had never noticed what it was that Fatima ate, save the fact that she never had saucisson or ham. Maman was shaking her head.

“Chocolate mousse, then. I will have the cheeses inside, and if he will eat them we can bring them to the table. Good Lord in Heaven, does he drink wine? This Fatima, does she wear the scarf? Going to school?”

“No, Maman. She says it would be silly to put it on outside when God sees her all day without it inside the school”

“Thanks be to the Saviour. Now, before you wake your do-nothing brother, let us see what we will need for the meal”

In the end, while Maman prepared the mice and the lentils, Roland and I drove out to the large shop for bread, cheese, wine, and at Maman’s insistence a lot of fruit juice, just in case Abdullah was so observant of his religion as to shame the rest of us into abstinence. And new shoes, a sandal in straps, for my feet continued to grow. I watched Rollo as we did our business, and it was wonderful, if perhaps strange, how I now saw him.

My brother was handsome, that was my thought. I did not desire him, but as I became more and more the woman I had always known I should be I saw him with the eye of a woman, I knew, without a doubt, that when he took Margot to the Mairie he would attract the gaze of every woman there, and most of them would have desires that would not be right for a sister to share. Those thoughts brought another, and I wondered how handsome the sperm donor must have been to ensnare our mother, and to leave such a legacy to his son. My brother was indeed beautiful.

He caught my gaze. “Of what are you thinking, my little one?”

I looked down at my feet and shrugged at the words. “I am just dreaming of how beautiful Margot will look on your arm, my brother. A jewel needs a splendid setting in which to shine, and you…”

My clever words died, and I saw his smile again, and oh how I loved him. “One day, my sister, one day you will shine on someone’s arm, and then I will be there for you. Now…we must be professional. There is stationary over here, and it is for little children, and I think we must buy some to show where our guests should sit. Asterix or Tintin?”

And so we ended up with place-markers for our guests. Rollo, of course, was Asterix and Guillaume Obélix; Abdullah would be Panoramix for his knowledge, Maman Bonemine (naturally), Fatima Iélosubmarine, and Margot, at my insistence, Cléopá¢tre. To my embarrassment, my brother insisted I should be Falbala, the beautiful one.

We returned after a coffee and a small piece of cake for me and a much larger one for my brother, and together we brought out the tables and chairs for our meal. The cold Spanish thing was already in the refrigerator, and the kitchen was enchanting my nose with the smell of the lamb. I had just creamed the spinach when our guests arrived, for Abdullah had collected Guillaume and Margot as well as his sister.

He was as dark as Fatima, but where she was comfortable in her plumpness, he was tall and sharp in the nose. His sister had been absolutely right, and he was pulled to four pins in his clothing and haircut. I had to stifle a small giggle at birth when I found myself trying to see his shoes, but they were of a kind with the rest of him, impeccably so. Fatima introduced him to me, and then he smiled, and in his eyes I saw my brother, just as Fatima saw hers, and I wondered at this apparent law of the universe that big brothers must be tall, and kind, and loving towards their sisters.

“Abdullah, Fatima, this is my mother”

“Julienne, I beg you”

“And my brother, Roland”

“Rollo, please”

Fatima made it very obvious that he was being inspected sternly, as if on parade, and then she could pretend no more and laughed. “Margot, I see now why you smile! If you ever fall out of love with this one, you will find a crowd of other women awaiting their turn!”

In the end, the two were not as observant as Maman had feared, and the cheese was no issue, although Fatima abstained from the wine. In the end, her brother had removed his jacket and his tie, and even his vest, as the food and the wine worked with the sun to relax our group. Finally, though, things had to be said.

“My sister tells me that your father is estranged for many years, Sophie. Guillaume, Julienne, I need no written file to see your hopes, so let us be without any wasting of time. You fear two things, two that I know of. One is that Sophie’s father will attempt to take her into his custody, and the other is that he will seek to take your property for his own. Nine years, you say, Julienne?”

“Nine indeed, with that whore from the tabac”

“Is there any urgency for your marriage, that with Guillaume? Forgive my blunt questioning, but I wish this matter finished so that we can continue as a wonderful day of friends and family and good food. Oh, and wine. I must order a taxi for later…there is no prospect of further issue soon?”

I saw my mother’s eye make a small movement.

“No, Abdullah, there is none. I am not with child”

“I am sorry to be so prurient. If that is so, then the simplest course is to await Sophie’s majority, which will be soon, no? As for property…?”

Rollo leant forward, Margot’s hand in his. “We had a small lottery win, which allowed us to move, to clear our debts and find a better life here. We are stable now, financially, but we are not wealthy”

Abdullah frowned. “This win, it was after he went with this…whore?”

“Yes, years after”

“I see. This is how it works, with abandonment, with adultery. He is gone two years and many more, and that means a judge can make a declaration of divorce. Unless he contests it, there are two things that we must protect. I have already explained what they are. A notary public makes the apportionment of assets, and I know the right man, or at least I know several of them and would be able to assist them in their logical processes. Your win; tell me, how much money does your husband send to you for the feeding and care of his---that is all the answer I needed or expected. Thank you, Julienne. This will be cake, unless, of course, there is anything else that might throw an evil light on things?”

It had to be said, it had to be faced. “Yes, there is”

Fatima’s brother looked at me without speaking, and then nodded. “How long has it been now? Two years, Serge?”

Fatima’s eyes went round, and her brother put a hand on her shoulder. “Worry not, my little princess. I do not go before a magistrate without researching my case, and I do not make offers to help friends without knowing theirs”

He turned back to me. “I know where to look, little one, so once I knew, the signs were easy to spot. It is also clear to me how correct your course of action is. I am not here to judge…”

He smiled again, and once more he was no accusatory figure but the brother of a close friend, He frowned slightly.

“I do not get paid as well as the judges, either! Forgive my bluntness, little one. I can see by the reactions of the others sitting here that they already knew, so I was correct in my guessing. This is one of the things that worries you, no? That your father–“

“Sperm donor!”

“Yes, Fatima warned me of that. That the man in question might accuse your mother of abusing you, and try and hurt her through you, no?”

Rollo growled. “He will come nowhere near my family and live”

“Yes, and you would be without your family until you are old, Rollo. This is not something he would do and look you in the eye, it is a war fought with documents and signatures. I have said what I needed to, my friends, for I feel that you are such. Sophie, Fatima has talked of you constantly since you met, and I believe that you, and, yes, Margot, you, are behind the strength she has developed against our mother’s planning for her. So, friends we are, agreed? Now, what I can do is mostly in preparation. Julienne, Guillaume, we can have a file ready for a judge as soon as Sophie has her birthday. With the consent of all of you, I would like to start preparing another document, this time to be a collection of sworn affidavits as to Sophie’s well-being and safety. This, er, sperm donor can dance and sing all he wishes, but I believe Sophie said something about pockets?”

I laughed with relief. “Maman said the same thing, but she was much ruder! Fatima, we will talk, and I will explain, no?”

She signed no with her head. “No. Not the way you think. I know who my friend is, and if she wishes some day to tell me of her pain when younger, we will talk. But to apologise, to explain, to feel that she has hurt me, no; that conversation we will never have, for it will never be needed. I told you I was proud of my brother, no?”

Maman sniffed. “I think we should have coffee now. I am but an aged cook, but I have a daughter and a fit young suitor, so perhaps they should see to its preparation”

Guillaume and I left the table, and I put the water on to heat. I turned, and he was behind me, and in my eyes, and as one we embraced.

“Oh, Papa…”

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”

Another birth, and with those words he showed me that he recognised me not only as his child but as part of his family. My tears prolonged the embrace so much that my mother entered the kitchen and our embrace became threefold. Maman eventually began to chuckle.

“This is amusing, no? Second marriages, wicked stepmothers, and already we are closer than people would dream. Sophie, we must leave the others to their ignorance for the moment, but…”

Guillaume, Papa, tightened his grip for an instant. “Yes, it is necessary, but once we have dealt with all of the unpleasant necessities I will do this thing, I will recognise my daughter before the world”

I simply murmured “And what of Margot?”

He kissed my cheek. “And Margot does not already love you as her sister? Just remember one thing: this next Summer, we take our holiday as a family. Even if it is only at Arromanches on the Municipal Ground. Now, coffee for our guests, otherwise they will be restive”

We filled the coffee-maker and carried it with the necessities to the table, and I caught Abdullah’s gaze upon me, and I felt my soul was lying open before him for inspection. There was no threat, but it was clear how piercing his mind was, how difficult to mislead. Margot took my arm as I sat.

“You have been crying: why?”

“Happiness, Margot. Just happiness. This is becoming all that I have ever dreamt of, and sometimes, sometimes I find it hard to believe that it is real. And then I am shown that it is exactly that, that I am now living in my dream. How could a woman not weep?”

She laughed. “And so speaks a real woman!”

At the end of the meal, Abdullah decided he had had too much of the wine for safe driving, and as Rollo cleared the table he made a call for a taxi. There were goodnights said, and kisses exchanged, and it was not just my brother and sister who were so open in their display. Such life in my mother’s eyes, such love in my father’s. That night was the beginning of so much.

Abdullah returned the next morning, for his car, and it was with him and his sister that I rode to school rather than with the herd on the bus. I had telephoned Elle to advise her, and she had clearly spoken to my boy, for he awaited me at the gates and I received the same attention to my presence as Roland and Papa had given in their farewells.

Life was good, and it continued to get better. Christmas came as it always does, but this was new. We had shared what was truly our first family celebration the year before, but this time it was as a declaration to the world, and to the past, for Papa insisted that we journey to the house he shared with my sister.

“My sweet, this is a letting in of light for us. Since…since those days, that awful night, this house has held shadows. Please understand: I do not wish to discard what there was in my past, forget Margot’s own mother, no? But there must be an opening, a reawakening. We have life again, and I am sure she will be happy for us as she watches from above”

And we had guests, as well, both of the girls I loved as sisters to sit with my real one, and Elle’s parents, and Abdullah. His, Fatima’s parents, they could not observe our celebration, but they sent a card, and gifts, and their smiles for us.

And there was Benny. He grew smaller and bigger simultaneously, as he became truly a man and the extra kilogrammes seemed to fly from his body. I caught little glances at him from Elle, and I spoke to her in a quiet place.

“Sophie, it is two things. You have him here, and I do not have my Matty, and I find that hard. I am jealous for you, and pleased for you, and…and there is your mother, and Rollo, and happiness seems to be following you like seabirds behind a fishing boat”

She punched me very softly in the arm. “No, I am not really unhappy. I just miss him at this time…well, our time will come!”

I looked hard at her, and there were little hints of tears in her eyes. “Elle…you really love this boy, do you not?”

She just signed yes with her head, sharply, and then clung to me tightly. “More than anyone, Sophie. I did not expect it, but it is true. I cannot imagine being without him, and I do not know if it is as strong for him as it is for me. I look at Margot and your brother, and I die inside, and still it is wonderful. Even you and Benoit…”

She lifted her head to look at me. “You love him too, do you not? I see it in your face, my friend. And he does not know all, does he?”

I shook my head rapidly for no, and she embraced me again. “He loves you, Sophie. He tells my Matty these things, as boys rarely do. He would be with you forever if he could. You must see this. One day he must know”

My own tears were now there. I could but whisper “Not yet, Elle…”

Not yet. I must have what joy I could before he rejected me and I was punished for what I knew were lies, lies told to the sweetest boy I knew.

And Spring, and preparations for our final examinations for our Baccalaureate. I received two pieces of news, the first being a confirmation that I was being offered my place in Perpignan, and the second…the second was from Mme Chinon. Our little meetings had become more and more cordial.

“Sophie, your birthday is next week, no? Would you wish to join a tail of people?”

“Madame, do you mean…?”

“Yes, I mean. There are possibilities here, and I must know if you are flexible in your acceptance. There may be an opportunity for the full suite of surgical procedures, but there may only be one for your castration. That is perhaps a little blunt, but we must be honest with each other, no? If all that is available for now is the removal of those glands, would you be willing to wait for another date for the rest?”

“Absolutely! Yesterday, last year, at birth, I have never wanted them!”

“Good. One advantage their removal would bring is a reduction in the medication you must take, which should be obvious. It is quite a simple operation, really. Now, your mother, how does she go?”

As simple as that. She obtained my consent for surgery and then moved to social conversation. It felt like some odd dream.

I had my birthday, and we had our examinations, and we were free. I mean that last in many ways. We were released from school, from the daily journey and the hours at desks. We were released from the fear that the sperm donor could make any claim on me, Abdullah serving the proper documents to a judge. And Maman, Papa, they were free to declare their intentions to the world.

We had a meal at our house, and it was there that things happened. My mother’s strength is in the home, in the kitchen, and so much of my life has turned upon moments where she has provided the food to accompany her love. It was for my birthday, and for that day it was just my parents and my sister, my brother and the man who loved me. Three men who loved me, in total. Elle’s mother had been consulted, and while I would never, ever be able to outshine the beauty of my sister I had been presented to my Benny in as enchanting a way as could be managed. His eyes never seemed to leave mine, even though my breasts were so visible.

It was Rollo who broke the spell. He took a glass and tapped it with the edge of his knife to ring as a bell. “I must call for silence, for somebody here has a question he wishes to ask!”

Guillaume stood, and turned to Maman. “Julienne, we have waited for so long, and now this day is upon us we are free to move onwards without fear”

He took something from his pocket, and then knelt by Maman, and of course we all knew what he would ask, and what was in his pocket, and so he asked her, and she just smiled. “I must think about this”

I was shocked, and then her smile got wider, and she laughed. “Of course I must not. My love, how could I ever give an answer other than yes?”

A ring, kissing, champagne that my brother had hidden deep in the refrigerator, my parents in love and my own lover’s hand in mine. The world was nearly perfect.

Some days later, Benny took me for our own birthday celebration, and it was to the cinema, and I do not remember the film because it was swallowed by our passion, and I had remembered to bring paper tissues with me this time. I knew that Elle and Matty were making love whenever they could, and of course my family, they were discreet, but Roland, and Maman, there was such intimacy, and I could not. So I used my hand, and Benny caressed my breasts, and that was still wonderful, and I knew I loved him deeply. One day, as Elle said, if Mme Chinon found me a place, one day our time would come.

So I put his piece back inside his trousers, and we walked hand in hand and smiling from the cinema, and as we did I heard a too-familiar voice call out behind me.

“God’s brothel! It’s that cocksucking arsehole Laplace! In a dress! Hey, the blond, what do you do, then, fuck him in the arse or suck each other’s cock? Laplace! I am talking to you!”

Benny’s hand was crushing mine, and he gave me a look that frightened me, but he turned to face what was none other than Pierre Forgeron. He said not a word as the boy, the man, grinned, but just hit him very, very hard in the face, and he fell down, and then it was confusing, because there were others with him, so Benny hit two of them as well, and then he seized my arm and we walked away from the bodies on the floor, and not one word came from him until we were in the bus and riding back towards the coast. He sat in silence, till he turned to me with eyes of stone.

“This is true? You are male?”

My tears were there too quickly, and I signed a yes. “My name was Serge. I am not male, not where it counts”

“No? And you did not think to tell me, so I did not count?”

It was not his stop, but he stood.

“Goodbye, Serge”

He stepped off the bus and away from my life.

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.

CHAPTER 30
I did not return home that Christmas but stayed with Roser. I had called her shortly after I arrived at Perpignan, and she insisted on being driven by her son out to where I had been given a room, to make sure I was comfortable and safe, in her words.

“Ah, girl, this is no kitchen for one with a mother like yours! You need…what is distressing you?”

That very nearly broke me, and before her son I fell into more tears. She led me to my bed and sat down with me.

“Tears? This is that boy, that Benny? You were so quiet in the Summer, when you slept under Thierry’s roof. I had thought it was that you lacked him. It is worse, is it not? An ending?”

I nodded. She embraced me, and whispered into my ear. “A girl, so tall, so slender, you shall have many suitors here”

The only word that blazed in my mind was the one that Benny had thrown at me: trust. I could no longer lie to this woman.

“I cannot, Roser. There are things you do not know about me”

“No? The size of your feet perhaps? Or the shapes in your modest bathing suit?”

I was shocked out of my tears. “You know?”

“I told you, that first day, how I was a mother, and a grandmother, no? And I put the cream to your skin, and I did not feel the hardness of some muscles? I told you of the prescription, you had forgotten in your sorrow? Sophie, I am too old to worry about little things and so I concern myself with the big ones: who is this person I see? I saw a girl, yes, a polite girl, a girl charming to me, and modest. You are to…”

She said something in Catalan to Jaume, who was just sitting on the one chair looking concerned, and for one moment of true weakness I wondered whether his concern spared any for me. He cleared his throat, with some nervousness.

“Mama says, she asks, will you be having surgery to make…a difference there?”

I tried to smile. “Some I have had already. They took away---“

“No, I do not wish to hear. But if you mean that you now have no other source of hormones, then we must talk”

Roser nodded. “Think, my little one. My son can organise the necessary medication that your doctor writes for you, and you are not to be seen then collecting something that could bring misfortune on you. Now, we have you calmer, si? If you can, we would know what happened to hurt you so terribly”

I told them as much as I could bear, of the old days and the beatings, the new ones and the friendships, the love; of the voice from my past, that name from him and then from Benny.

“I cannot return, I cannot. I am lost”

Roser continued to hold me. “Then I must speak with your mama, no? If you cannot go home then she must come here. Not always; a student must have their space for wildness. But you will not be alone, Sophie, even though you believe you are. And you will not sit in this cell every night. You will be with us when we each have time, and a Catalane you will become”

She sighed happily. Jaume raised an eyebrow, then shrugged at me. “There is no use in resisting, my little one. She will have her way. Perhaps it will be you as the cooking teacher, your mother as the student”

They took me from my room to a small café where a stream or canal passed under many baskets of flowers, and we had a piece of cake and some coffee, and then a little wine. Roser’s presence was bringing me into some light, and she was full of questions.

“Your brother, your Roland, his wedding, it was nice?”

Yes. It had been wonderful, as pure a day of love as could have been hoped for, even filtered through my shadows of loss. Margot had been as beautiful as all of us save her had always known, and my brother more beautiful than I had ever seen or imagined possible of him. We had driven from the Mairie in a line of cars, their klaxons blowing, until we had arrived by the Men’s Abbey for photographs of my beautiful brother and sister. I managed to force a smile onto my face for my own photograph, but I did so by reminding myself repeatedly that it was not my day to spoil but theirs, and I must make it as sweet and fitting as I could.

Roser laughed when I spoke of Matty and his sudden emergence of courage with Elle, and when I explained that…Guillaume had asked for my mother’s consent to their own wedding she smiled again.

“Ah, Sophie, there is more of these things than you tell. Now, we are agreed–“

Jaume interrupted, calmer now that we were not talking of surgery to intimate parts. “Sophie, when Mama says we are agreed it is translated best as ‘She Has Spoken’. Is that not true, Mama?”

Roser gave another of her shrugs. “I find it makes the life go much more simply, and that is because I am right always. What it is that I was saying: you will visit us, and we will visit you, and you will heal. Your studies will excite you, and you will become a grown woman to amaze your Benny---no, no tears. There are flowers, there is wine. And cake with chocolate. Come, son of mine, let us take this lady to her place. Write the numbers, Jaume”

I was given a piece of paper with several telephone numbers upon it, and Jaume took me back to my room. Roser pressed my hands tightly before they left.

“Sophie, my little sweet, these are numbers to be used, not left hidden somewhere. Call upon us, not only when you have need, but as a friend does, to give greeting and to speak of nothings. You will heal. I know this thing”

The studies began, and they took away some of my pain simply by leaving me no time for it. They were absorbing, and it was clear that they were to make me more than a reader and speaker of the language, because they addressed the subject so broadly. There was the history of the tongue, and at the same time the history and theory of all tongues. That was indeed a welcome discovery, that I could use my mind to ease my soul. I still could not face my family, my friends, that place for Christmas or St Sylvestre. I know that Roser spoke to Maman, and I can make assumptions about what was said, but to my shame I could not make myself endure the memories. That Christmas should have begun with my Benny meeting me from the train, embracing me, telling me of his longing for my return. That was not something that would happen. And so I spent my first Christmas without my family, and then the next one was easier, and the third…

Roser was wrong; there were no suitors, or rather there may have been but I ensured there were none that went further than a second essay at saying hello to me.

Maman, Margot and my brother came down for the first Summer break, for I did not go home, and for the second, but that one I spent along the coast in Palavas, in a bad hotel filled with mosquitos. I tried not to answer their calls, unless Roser caught me, when she would insist I spoke. It was one call, one conversation that brought me once more to the brink of the precipice.

“Sophie…it is Maman. Mme Chinon wants to speak to you. You have an opportunity in August, if you wish it, but it is here, at home. You must come to us”

“Can I not have it here?”

“My sweet, there is only the place at the CHU. To find one down there, it would be near to impossible. And…”

I could hear the tears in her voice, and my heart pained me, but to go back there, it was too much to bear.

“Sophie, there is more. Your Papa, myself, we would be wed then. How can we marry without our daughter to witness and share?”

I am not your daughter, not in the eyes of Benny. That was my thought, and it was the sharp glare given to me by the Catalane that was all that showed me what I must do. I had forced myself for my brother, my sister. How could I not for my parents? And so, when I had finished my studies, and University was behind me, I packed up what I had accumulated in my little cell, which consisted of clothing, text books and nothing much beyond those, and Jaume drove me to the railway station in Narbonne, from where the trains were simpler, and Rollo met me at the other end of the journey, just as the last lights in my soul were going out.

CHAPTER 31
He looked at me as he drove, and I feared for his steering.

“What are you doing, Sophie?”

“What do you mean?”

“We do not see you, we do not speak to you, even when we take a holiday to see you, you go somewhere distant from us. You are distant from us now, distant from me in this car. My wife, your sister, you do not speak, you do not enquire. You must know she has finished her studies, as you have. Where are your questions?”

He pulled hard at the steering wheel of the car, and to a sound of klaxons he stopped by the side of the road and seized my shoulders. There were tears in his eyes, and his mouth was moving in twisted ways. He held me at a distance, at the length of his arms, and then embraced me. I could feel his tears, but I had none of my own.

“Yes, I know of Maman and Guillaume, of you and Margot. Do you know what she said? That you were already her sister, and this was simply confirmation, that she could love you no more than she already did. We would have children, my Maggie and I, and they will know their family. They will have all that we never did, and you WILL be there. Sophie…”

He drew me to him as he turned in his chair, and I did not resist, there was no point in doing so.

“My sister…I met somebody yesterday, somebody that made me smile. She was an Englishwoman, a red, and yet her passport, it still had the masculine in it, and I said to her, you are an Englishwoman for how long, and she, she spoke well, and she smiled and said she was a Welshwoman, and from her birth, and that the man with her was her well-beloved. And…and I said I had a brother, who was now a Norman girl, and that I was pleased for her, and that I loved her. And so this Englishwoman, this Welshwoman, she went, with her man, and their family, and she too was tall, and all I could think about was my sister, how such a life could be hers if she stopped hiding her head in her behind”

His hands clenched in the fabric over my shoulders, and then he released me, with obvious great effort.

“Sophie, you will have your hospital stay, and then you will heal, and there is to be a marriage. You will be there for that, and we, your family, are here for you. This is the time that we make our family complete, no? Will you not speak to me?”

“Rollo, I will do all that is needed for that day”

“Whore of a brothel of shit, why are you getting your piece cut off if you don’t care? I fuck myself about whether you have it done or not, but you, you still want it gone even though you are dead to everything else! Why?”

It was indeed odd. I felt nothing, could feel nothing, about those around me, but my body, I wanted it real. I could never be real, of course, for I was a fraud, a liar to all, but this one thing, this deformity, I could at least dispose of that. I wanted to say to him that I would die clean, but he would understand such a statement only one way, and he would be right. I herded words together like lost sheep.

“Rollo, I must be whole. I must do this. The rest of things, they do not matter. But I must be whole”

“Name of God, girl, you have not even sought a job, have you? Piece of shit, I would give up, but I cannot. That is my pain, you idiot, all logic says I should give up on you, walk away, fuck off and leave you, but I cannot, WE cannot, your mother, your father, your sister, yes?”

He lifted my chin. “Your brother, my sweet. I could never leave you, abandon you. I said it to that Englishwoman, Welshwoman. I am here, beside you, always, yes?”

Sometimes, when there is much rain, and a river floods, it carries with it so much debris, so much rubbish, that it forms a natural barrage behind which the flood stands and deepens, until suddenly the pressure becomes too overbearing and the whole thing collapses in a torrent of dirt and damage, and the riverbed is scoured and swept, and that was my moment, just then. This man, this brother, this flesh of mine, he was breaking before my numbness, and my barrage began to give. Suddenly, it was me that embraced him, and my own floods came, and he said nothing as my carefully-arranged words fled across my mind and out of my mouth in ones and twos, and with little sense or order, but Rollo, my Rollo, he understood, and he held me close.

“I will never let you fall, my sweet. That is my promise”

He took me home, at last, where my parents, my sister, awaited me, and there was more, and it differed from my brother’s welcome, but it was still exactly the same, and once again I slept with a desire to awake the next day.

Maman was up and preparing the breakfast before I rose, and I felt ashamed as I came to her, but she simply smiled and gave me a kiss. “Welcome home, my little sweet one”

Rollo was already at work, but Margot was soon with us, and once more I received a kiss.

“Papa has made us an offer, Sophie. There is no sense in him keeping the old house, so he is giving it to us. We shall have the room there, the room for…oh, my friend, I am sorry. You know I mean no harm, no spite”

I smiled at her, to show my understanding. “You and Rollo, you would have many children, no? And Papa, he will live with his wife, but close enough to see their grandchildren?”

My brother does it, my sister too; they smile, and there is suddenly beauty everywhere the light reaches. She took my hand.

“I may have something for you, Sophie, some work that will help you heal. No, you have been ill, it is true. People do not need to be seen bleeding, or to vomit, to be unwell. Maman..”

She looked towards my mother, and there were more smiles. “It makes sense for me to call her that. And they have told all, our parents, and I have nothing but joy from their news. Now, have you heard of the English place, the Open University?”

“No, not a thing”

“Well, my sister, they are an organisation that teaches mostly mature people, and they teach many things, and one is our language. They bring students here for a week in the Summer, where everything is in French, it must be spoken all the time and not English, but some of the students, they are not so strong. You would be an assistant, an aide. They are usually nice people; I met many as I studied”

I tried a smile, and she noticed. “Margot, sister, you have already put things in place, have you not?”

I heard Maman laugh behind me. “I have my other daughter back, I see”

More embraces, more tears, and then Maman dressed me and washed my face, and took me to see Mme Chinon, who made her leave the room before she spoke to me.

“Sophie, your family have told me of your behaviour, of your distress. That is fine, it is useful, but it also worries me, and I must hear things from your own lips. Talk to me”

I found my words once more, ordered them. “That is…that is a difference today, that I can talk. Rollo…”

She asked no question, just raised her brows.

“My brother, he said things to me, things concerning family, and love, and…there is no easy way to explain this, but I see things differently at this very moment”

I drew a few breaths. “I have studied, and I have read, and I have hidden. I took no friends at Perpignan except for those I already had, and I know I have hurt them, but they stayed true. I had decision made, when I left, to come here and take the surgery, and see my mother and father wed, and then, when I was whole, complete, I would finish things. I am a liar, a fraud, and I felt that should not continue”

I looked at her, and once more she just raised her brows, an invitation to continue.

“Rollo, he talked to me, and then my sister, and Maman, and, it was, it was that I was so far away I could see nothing but what was before my eyes, and that was emptiness, and I hid from them, and…”

My tears were there once again, for in the last day they came so easily, as the debris swept through my life. She waited, and as she did so I realised what I had said, and that she had not missed those words.

CHAPTER 32
“The wedding, Sophie, your mother and…father?”

It was said so deliberately, such a pause between the words, that to misunderstand her meaning was impossible. Once more, shame took me. All of my life was fraud, lies. Slowly, though, I began to realise that her voice was so soft, so different to the hard face that had met Maman and me on out first visit.

“Your mother, Sophie, is a strong woman. I misunderstood her at the beginning of this, I mistook her character as loose, but all she has done has been for you, and that is as a mother should be for her child, no? There is a story, but I do not feel that it needs to be shown to the world. From what I have heard of your…sperm donor I feel that all things are best served by confidence and silence. It answers a lot of questions I had found in my mind, though…

“Sophie, you are depressed. That perhaps sounds to you like a really obvious thing to say, as obvious as the towers of St Etienne, but it is not as simple. There is a difference between being sad after an unpleasant event, a loss perhaps, and being depressed. One is a natural reaction, the other is an ailment. How your University medical people did not offer you treatment---oh. That is as these things go. You did not speak to them of your pain, did you? I need no answer, it is legible in your face.

“Now, I have a tentative diagnosis, but I see two possibilities. One is that you have a potentially serious disorder of your nature, in which you are depressed as your normal consideration of the world about you. I must take care that this, if it is the case, is properly investigated and treated, and you must cooperate with me, no? It is not normal that I speak to my patients so openly, but you have become special to me and I would have you well”

She took my hand at that point, her voice having risen slightly, and then she sighed. “The other possibility is that tentative diagnosis I mentioned. Forgive my spicy words, but you have had a life so full of shit I am astonished you are still here to be treated. The only reason I see for that is Julienne, your mother”

“There is also my brother”

“Yes, yes, but he takes his character from his, your mother. Roland is her creation, no? Anyway, it is a natural reaction to lose hope, to lack joy in life, but you have had a bright segment in between, That boy…here, there are tissues”

I wiped my face, and she continued. “You were without hope, but I knew that from what you had said about your other life. Suddenly, you are free, Sophie is free. New home, new name, new friends, not just a NEW life but A life. Not so?”

I made yes with my head. I could not speak.

“And then, this boy, and bang, all is exploded by the things from your past, your years of shit, no?”

She squeezed my hand. “Sophie, in such a case, is it not rational to become depressed? That is what I feel is your ailment. I hope so, anyway, because it is something we can talk about, and I do not have to sprinkle your brain with chemicals. Now, it is your turn to talk to me”

I left her room with no paper for the chemist. She had told me that such drugs were available, but that they would simply take me back to the grey isolation Rollo had broken, and I could not face that again, because I knew now how much it hurt the ones I loved. Maman drove us towards home, and on an impulse I asked her to drive us to the big shop. She was puzzled, but did as I asked, and after she had stationed the car I led her inside, to the end of the lines of shoes that ran in order of size down each side of us.

“What is it, my sweet?”

“Maman, do you remember? That first day, when we came here, and I had a dress, and sandals…my first day as myself, no? I just wished to see this place, feel it again. Where I was born”

“This is not where you were born, my sweet girl. This is just where you changed your clothing. You have always been my Sophie, I just put you in the wrong things. Now…I will make a telephone call, but first, we must order ice creams for sitting in the sun with”

I went to purchase the treats as she made her call, and then we found a seat outside, by the place for children to play, and I thought back to the events of some five years before, frightened and exhilarated at the same time. I almost found myself laughing, but then there were figures before us, and Elle was throwing herself onto my body, Matty behind her. He stayed at a distance while she wept out a welcome to me, and over her head I saw that he looked nervous, almost frightened.

“Matthieu”

He looked down at his feet. Big feet…”Sophie. I am sorry”

His eyes came back up. “I must apologise. I said things, years ago, that I have never had the opportunity to take back from you. You have not spoken to Elle, or me, in all that time, and we have waited, I have waited. This must be put right”

“It cannot be put right, Matty. What has passed is past, it is there, and…and Benny is not. He does not have the courage to face me?”

I was trying for bravado, but my strength was too little.

“Sophie, Benny, Benny is gone”

Elle saw my face. “No, no, not like that, Sophie! He lives! He has just done a stupid thing. Then, he did a stupid thing that night, no? Matty, myself, we tried to tease him that he had seen too many bad films at the cinema, but he would not listen, and so he signed for five years. The Legion, Sophie, the stupid boy, with that blond hair, he went to Marseille”

That was so typical of him, the romantic core he held, to do something from a poor film or bad novel. Elle still sat with me, her head on my breast. “Benoit, he said that it would be five years, and then they would help him with a University, and he would have a space to think”

She laughed. “I said to him, Benoit, I said, the Legion is a place to forget things, and he said, no, how could he forget you, and why was it that the Lord had to put you in a boy’s flesh? And I said, Matty said, we begged, do not do this thing, speak with her, this can be put right, but he went. He is in Asia now, doing military things. Matty, you have words to say to her”

He made yes with his head, sharply. “Sophie, when this happened, I was a child. I did not see clearly. Benny told me of what that boy had said, and I laughed, and I asked how big your piece was, and it was the action of a stupid little boy, and Benny cried, and he said, they will know, the world will know, that I am with a boy…and I did not argue with him, did not tell him he was wrong in what he said. Elle has lost you for three years, I have lost you. Benny…oh, Benny has fucked himself in the arse with the stupidity, the pride, and I helped.

“Sophie, you know this one, this little one, my little love, she sees you as her sister, and the pain…you are right. We cannot change what has taken place, but will you allow me to attempt to make the future better?”

Once more, my dam fell apart and my tears came. I could not hate these people, it would have been like hating my brother. Elle’s embrace tightened.

“And now you are back, we must shop for wedding clothes”

I gathered my voice to me. “Elle, the wedding, they will have it as a small one, a quiet one”

She sniffed. “No, you silly girl, not the wedding of two old people, but OUR wedding!”

There was another sniff then, a louder one, from my mother. “You would still have this old person to prepare your wedding meal for you, eh? Things can change, my child!”

The tears became laughter, and then tears again, and then smiles, and I allowed myself to rise and embrace Matty. What was done was done, but there remained life, and perhaps I could live it. One week later, after a lot of telephone conversations, I was called to the University in Caen. My life was moving once more.

CHAPTER 33
This was a new experience, for I was dressed formally, at Maman’s insistance and under Margot’s eye, in a cream shirt and dark grey skirt to my knees, flesh-coloured stockings and plain black shoes with a heel of perhaps five centimetres. I had asked her about the stockings. It was warm, almost stifling in the noon heat, and I would have gone bare-legged.

“No. That is not what a polite woman does. Not on a first meeting, not in formal attire. And remember: you must tell them of the hospital time to come. And…no, that would be a bad idea”

“What would?”

“I thought, perhaps, you would pretend that your CNI is damaged, or perhaps lost, but that would be an untruth, and one does not start new employment with that. Maggie, you will please do her face”

Bus, then tram, to the place where it all seemed to have started, the Boulevard Maréchal Juin tram stop by the big shops, where I had been accustomed to go for the books. This time, I was within the circle that the tram makes to turn round, so I had no need to race with the cars across the road. The shoes I wore would have made that a challenge. I felt the fear rise, though. Rollo had pierced my little death, brought me to the world again, and I remembered his words from so many years ago, that we were a world of our own, in our family, secure together against the outside. Now I was to face that world. All of my protectors had business that day, business they could not avoid or postpone, but Papa would meet me for the journey home.

Home. It was true; I had never felt I had a home but for our place with the garden, and it was my shelter, my cover from storms. Papa had come there when I arrived, and he had held me, as my sister, and brother, and mother had done, and I had felt not just love come from him but pride. Sophie was reality in the eyes of two men, at least, and Matty, he was trying.

I walked across the little piece of grass to the street that led to the administration, and there were four or five other people who seemed to be moving the same way. I kept my document case containing my certificates from school close to me, and my voice to myself. I did not know these people, and that was yet a difficulty.

There were more people at tables, and lists, and coffee, and absolutely everywhere were English voices trying to speak, some better than others but many much worse. They were older people, but they were all smiling, and that relaxed my fears just a little.

I presented myself to a tall girl with a large nose and a Paris accent. Her name badge said that she was Claudia. She checked my name against her list, and directed me to a particular room, and I made a knock at the door.

“Enter!”

A smaller woman sat there, perhaps in her forties, spectacles on a cord and dark-haired, pretty in a tired way. Her badge read ‘Pascale’

“Good afternoon, Sophie, I am Pascale Deniaud. Not Madame Deniaud, nor Mademoiselle, but Pascale. We are a friendly tribe here, as we welcome so many foreigners every year. Now…”

She looked down at the papers she had before her. “You have not yet received your degree from Perpignan. Do you know of the result?”

I looked down and blushed. “It was first class, Pascale”

“Excellent”

She moved immediately into English, and while there was a clear Norman accent, and her aspirated T’s needed attention, she was very good. I replied in the same language.

“Sophie, there is one thing I must bring up. It is what the English call an elephant in a room, something that everyone knows about and cannot avoid, but will not acknowledge or discuss. That was your first lesson, by the way. Now, your gender…”

I had done this before, at University, but there I had simply hidden, spoken to none, kept in a smaller world even than the one Roland described. This was a step out into new lands.

“Pascale, I shall be having things rearranged hopefully in a month or two, my doctor has promised. Here in Caen”

“So you still have your…?”

“My piece? Yes”

“The English don’t say that. They might say ‘penis’, or perhaps ‘cock’, and some of them talk about their ‘bits’…especially on the last night here, when they all seem to get very, very drunk. I do believe there is a lot of mutual examination of that area, especially in the small hours of that night”

I blushed, and she smiled. “They are all grown people. They are entitled to their fun, and they are here only for one week, a long way from home. It is natural. Now, you are obviously a girl, despite your extra flesh, so I would have no hesitation in allowing you to use the ladies’ while you are here”

“Use the ladies? What for?”

She laughed aloud. “An English word to mean the water closets for women. I must ask…you are a normal girl? Not a follower of Sappho? In case of problems in the WC?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A lesbian. Oh, there are so many English slang words you will learn, my girl, but I will try to be polite. You do not desire women sexually?”

Once more somebody had tissues to hand to catch my tears, and the story had to come out, but in our own language, and she was just so very, very nice about everything until I was controlled again.

“Sophie, I will offer you this employment. Your English is very good, if slightly formal, and your accent is clear enough. There are two stages taught here, each divided into four levels, and I would put you at the worst level, if I may. They are the students who need the best from our teachers, and so you would work as an assistant to a professor in two groups. You should be aware that there are evening responsibilities as well. We have a night walk in the City, as well as other activities, so perhaps you may accept a student room for convenience, and perhaps you are unaware that the work is actually seven days each week. There is a break, for they arrive on the Saturday and depart the following Friday afternoon, usually a lot more quietly than they arrived, with wooden heads in most cases. It continues to the beginning of August only, so you will be able to have time for…that procedure. Sophie…I will see you in four days, if you wish to accept, and may I just say…oh, boys, men, there are a lot of them about, and they come in all sorts of levels of virtue and value. Enjoy yourself here; find your smiles again, no?”

So many compliments. I walked happily from the office, hearing so much bad language around me, and made my way to the proper crossing for the Boulevard. No running would have been possible, and I was too distracted to cross any other way. There was a Quick by the big shop, and I treated myself to a hamburger and fried potatoes while I awaited Papa. He was already there, waiting; not in the Quick itself, but in the car park, his mobile telephone in hand, and when he sat with me, a hamburger of his own between us, and bound me to secrecy about it before my mother, I nearly wept again. It was like the moments separated in time, those ice creams with my mother at the other big shop. I had a father, and employment, if only for a few weeks. I could almost feel happy again.

“What are they like, these English, my little one?”

“They are variable, Papa”

How sweet it felt to use that word, so easily, so true. “Some of them seem to speak quite clearly. Others…They cannot tell their ‘U’ from their ‘OU’, and there was one, I do not know where he found it, but he spoke like someone from the South, all ‘eng’ and ‘ang’. I think they will be fun”

“And you had no problems over…?”

I steeled my spirit again, and held in my tears. “No, Papa, no. The lady, Pascale, she simply asked, and I told, and she asked if…if I desired women’s bodies, and I now know that I could have made a joke in English, because a woman’s body is all I want, but not in that way. And I…and I told her of Benny, and all was fine”

Papa reached across with a tissue and removed a spot of sauce from my face. “It is not fine, not if you miss your mouth so badly when you think of it, but it is better than it was, no? You have returned to us, almost intact”

He paused and thought. “Things can leave scars, my sweet, and that is good, for a scar reminds us each time that we must make better choices”

I thought of Rollo, and the sperm donor and that scar on his hand. I had Papa, I had Rollo; I could not fail. But I missed my Benny so much.

CHAPTER 34
My life seemed to consist of Summers. There had been the Summer of my rebirth, and the Summer by the sea, and those dreadful Summers when I had hidden from my family, and now it was a Summer of anticipation and adulthood. I was now a teacher, and although my charges were fully grown their language was that of small children. I found it confusing, because while they spoke as infants, the concepts they wished to express were adult. And they were so sweet.

Each of the weeks began on the Saturday morning, when I descended from the small room I had been allocated in a tall building over the cafeteria and bar, and we arranged tables and name badges and long lists of those who were to attend. By noon, as the kitchen staff brought us some plates of small food, the first were arriving. They came by taxi from the airport, or by tram from the railway station, or by car from the ferry, and several in each group came on bicycles laden with panniers and books. There was an hour or two of calm and quiet before their arrival, and then their conversation began to bubble up. Every so often I would hear Pascale or another professor utter the words “In French”, but the process of registering was too complicated for many to do in anything but their own language. That made me smile, for the practice was very helpful to me, in the English.

The afternoon finished with a more formal presentation in the large lecture hall, where we were all introduced, and then each class left with their professor to be shown their room. I had been astonished at the schedule, for they had morning lessons, afternoon lessons, evening lessons before their meal, and syndicates and tutorials after it. If they took everything, they could be working from eight and a half in the morning until ten in the evening. And they laughed, all the time.

Each class I assisted in contained people from all parts of England, even Scotland, and their accents were very strange, so a lot of my time was spent working to improve their vowels, particularly the nasals. It was incredibly intense for me, but it was also a moment of revelation. This was what I wanted to do with my life: teach. Each time I saw an eye light with understanding, it was a warmth in my soul. I had done that, I had made a difference to another person.

There were events most evenings, such as a Norman evening where we served small portions of all our favourite local food (and drink) and then the tall woman with the nose sang songs with a guitarist, and the English tried to sing them too. There was a film in the big hall, and Laurent took a large group on a night walk around the city where he explained the architecture and told stories from our history as the initially large group reduced one by one or two by two as bars and cafés were reached. And they drank, these English, drank as if they were Polish, and on the first Thursday night I saw what Pascale had meant. There was a discotheque, and dancing, and drinking, and much kissing in dark corners, and I was awoken in my small room by the sound of someone making very noisy love the other side of my wall. That happened on all but one of the Thursdays, but it was worst on that first one, for all I could think of was my Benny. I had looks, at breakfast, from the students. They had seen that I did not drink, but that Friday morning I looked just like them, eyes red as if my head were wood.

The evenings were for work, in a way, even if I did not teach the subjunctive or how to separate the sounds of en-an-in-on, because the students knew me, knew my role, and even the gentlest of conversations was help for them. I had to learn to smile again, it seemed, and it started to come more naturally, and grew more so with each hesitant approach.

The nights without discotheques or music I would be joined by Elle, usually with Matty towed behind her energy, or by my sister, once by my brother, and twice by Papa and Maman together. When Rollo came, that first week, I had to stifle my laughter.

There was a woman, one Janet, about thirty five years in her age, and she had chosen me, it seemed, as her confidante for the week. Each meal we sat together, and I made an effort to seek her out so that she would not feel she was haunting me, and the morning after I had been visited in the bar by Rollo she asked me the questions.

“The man, the pretty one last night?”

“It is handsome for the man, Janet”

“The handsome man, yes. He is yours?”

I laughed, as kindly as I could, so as not to offend. “He is my brother, Janet”

I swear faithfully that she sat up straighter, and I knew the next question, so I held up a hand to still her.

“Do you remember the blonde from the day before?”

“The very pretty blonde? The fat one?”

“Er, no. The tall one”

“What did I say?”

“That she had too much flesh, that she weighed too much. Fat”

“Oh, I am desolated!”

“And we say beautiful for a woman like her, not pretty, yes?”

“You are going to say that she is married to him, not so?”

I smiled and nodded, and Janet shrugged, and spoke in English. “Ah well, best see what I can trap on Thursday night, then. Got to be someone with no taste here”

That summed up the weeks, in one moment. They came, they drank, they tried to find a sexual partner, and all the time they studied hard, and laughed. Very, very strange people, but I grew quickly to adore their ways.

Matty was trying, too. Whatever had passed between him and Benny had shamed him, and with Elle’s pushing he seemed to be making his way back into my heart as a friend. My only evening without responsibilities was Friday, so we had a family meal in the City that night, as many as were free, for Rollo was tied to his rota of work. Each meal was a time of so much love I felt my heart might burst, and as it came after an afternoon in which a long tail of English people came to me to ask for a photograph and offer a kiss the emotions were intense.

This was life, as best as I could now hope to live it. Finally, the classes were over, and the last students departed on the final Friday. Pascale came to me as we put away the last of the lists and tables.

“Sophie, may I speak with you?”

“Of course”

We went to a quiet corner of the cafeteria, and she persuaded the kitchen people to provide a serving of coffee.

“Sophie, this has been an interesting period, no? How have you found it?”

I could not hold my smile. “They are wonderful people, Pascale, so full of life! I have enjoyed the time hugely”

She smiled, honestly and broadly. “They say much the same of you, my little one. They have each completed their pieces of paper to say how they felt about the course, and the staff, and all of them say the same things about you: animated, friendly, knowledgeable, helpful, all except one”

“Oh? What did I do wrong?”

Pascale laughed, very loudly. “Nothing. It was just the one woman, who wrote on her paper ‘such a pity her brother is married; nobody’s perfect, it seems’ “

We shared our laughter, and of course it was Janet. Pascale became more serious.

“Sophie, you have a gift, it seems, a talent. I have watched you, and they are right. You know your subject, and you have great love for it, and enthusiasm in its delivery. This is not a normal place, though, for the English here are here because they seek the knowledge you have, with their own enthusiasm. Normal teaching, normal classes, always have those who do not wish to be there, do not wish to learn. That is a different world to inhabit. I would like to make you an offer of employment, as an assistant in one of my schools, the schools I tour as part of my own work. You would be teaching much younger people, children just beginning the move from skipping ropes and dolls towards their Bacca. You would work as an assistant, as I have said, but the work would be counted towards your necessary qualifications and certificates as a teacher in your own right.

“There would be study, of course, and I would be pleased if it were here that you took those courses, and many of the pupils will be entirely little bastards, but I feel that you are infected with the delight that teaching brings. Am I right?”

I was stunned, but she had seen to my soul, and there was but one answer, and I gave it, and she gave back the kisses. I was to be a teacher, in truth and for good, and Maman wept when she heard, but that was not a problem because Papa wept with her, and Margot; Rollo seemed to need some time to look at the flowers in our garden.

Four weeks later, I lay on a wheeled bed, and an African man pushed it down a long corridor towards my final change.

CHAPTER 35
I will not live again the pain of those days and weeks, but neither would I wish that they had not happened. I was healed, at last, and with my family to greet me each day of my stay in the hospital the pain became almost a secondary thing. Almost, but not quite. Finally I was released into the care of my brother, sister, and parents, with a set of instructions and warnings for my new life freed from the unwanted extremity.

Family: yes, that was the word. Each of us now knew all that could be told, and my mother’s shame was washed from her with our mutual love and support. It was not a story to be shared with the world, but we held it to us as a warm thing. And there was laughter.

“There is one thing, my sweet, one great advantage”

“Yes, Maman?”

“My laundry duties have been cut in half now, at least where your underwear is concerned”

I healed, and it was inside, in my soul, as well as in my flesh. Each day of my convalescence would see Maggie depart for the University, for her higher studies in strange numbers, and Papa and Maman for their own work. Rollo would sit with me, if his duties allowed, or take me to the big shop for an ice cream, or perhaps to the shore for a slow walk as my body eased into its new form. That was a revelation and a delight, as at last everything was as it should have been from the day of my birth. The thoughts were there, though, that Benny would not have run then, not have felt the need to escape his shame.

My parents married in September, and it was so different from my experiences with my brother and sister, for Sophie was at this marriage, not the shell of a person who had passed through the other ceremony. It was a simple affair, as we had been promised, but there were touches of delight for me. My brother escorted Maman to her place beside her lover, and I attended as her helpmeet and maid, for nobody could have been more of a maiden than myself. I wore a new dress, a chiffon of palest blue, and the shoes I had grown to adore, with Maggie beside me as the married lady to oversee my maidenly left-handed errors. Henri had been kindness itself, and the bistro was separated into two parts for that Saturday, one of them only for the wedding party, and he had worked on the menu with the bride herself so that all was as it should be. The other part of the restaurant was, of course, filled with the English who paid Henri’s expenses, so he made no loss apart from the cost of our meal, his gift to his friend.

My mother’s waters ran quietly but deeply, and there were things I had yet to learn about her, as I had learned about her affair of convenience with my doctor. This was not something that surprised me, though: that my mother should be loved by the rest of the world was so obvious a thing, seen through my own love for her. This was as things should be.

There was a resettlement then, as all was now above the table, open to the eyes of the world that so clearly saw Maman as I saw her. She and Papa took up the residency of Papa and Maggie’s old home, whilst my sister and brother lived their married life with me in our home with the garden. I will not write ‘old home’ for that place, for it was truly the only home I felt we had ever had. The apartments in Caen, the rooms in the tall or even taller towers, they had never been homes. This was, though; we had made it ours, and the garden, that place we had first taken the sun in, that gave it a place in my heart that has never been filled in quite the same way.

It was the house where Sophie was born, the place where two of the people I loved most in this world had found the other two.

And then, two weeks after Maman and Papa, Matty and Elle were wedded in their turn, and it was Rollo who did me the honour of standing beside Matthieu as he became truly a man and took my first and best friend to himself. I say my first and best friend because the other was a sister in truth as well as in spirit, and that cannot be surpassed by any friendship no matter how strong.

Maman outdid herself with the wedding meal, which was held in the garden of the Clermont family home, and I was introduced to Matty’s parents, who clearly adored my little hand grenade as Matty did himself. That brought me tears, for I could not help but remember how I had made a match for them, and as I told that story (with no mention of foot size) I had no choice but to see again the smile of my gentle blond.

Tears at a wedding are traditional, for women, and I felt the emptiness between my thighs and knew myself for one. I bound my tears with smiles, and there was dancing and music, and so much laughter I could have been back with the English, until the newly-married left in a taxi for the airport and the flight to the Isle of Maurice that Matty’s papa Gaston had arranged as his gift.

It was a good time, as good as it could be for someone so alone as me. Rollo had relaxed into his married life as only he could do, and I would see him reclining, his shirt undone, as his wife lay against them, reading some abstruse text or other, and my heart would fill with love for both. My life would never be perfect, but this, this was more than I had ever hoped for.

Then, one morning in October, with a fine rain falling steadily in calm air, I stepped from the tram to begin my new employment with Pascale. It was a school in Hérouville, for children from seven years of age in one part and from eleven in another, and dressed in the same style as I had chosen for my interview at the University I sought out my new manager.

“Sophie!”

She awaited me just inside the gates, and we gave the kisses as children of all ages passed by. She led me to the room she described as the ‘escape hatch’, where we could hide form the gaze of the children.

“Sophie, it is true, is it not, that a teacher must set an example? Here we have the space to indulge in less exemplary activities, such as they may be, when the need arises. Now, leave your coat, and the umbrella, and we will walk the school before our first class”

Reception, sports facilities, cafeteria, water closets, library…my head span. Then, only then, she opened the door to a tumult of noise and clapped her hands sharply. The noise abated very quickly, and she smiled at the sea of faces that sat before our eyes.

“Good morning, children!”

There was a chorus. “Good morning Madame!”

They were of nine years, and there were thirty-one of them. How could I keep track?

“My children, we have a new aide with us from today. She has studied the English in Perpignan, so you may have to help her pronounce her R’s properly. Please say hello to Mlle Laplace”

Another chorus, and then Pascale handed me a large book.

“Our new friend will now call the roll. Mlle Laplace, if you will?”

So I did, and we began, and Pascale had been absolutely right. It was wonderful; I had found my place at last in the world.

CHAPTER 36
The classes were various. Pascale introduced me first to those of nine years, and they were full of children with open eyes and minds. This was the language of Hollywood and television, of video games and popular music. It should be understood that in France films in foreign languages are not normally heard in their original form but with the words spoken by specialised French actors, so that the voice of the original performer is an unknown in my country.

I had asked Rollo if his contacts with the ferry company could purchase discs in England of those films I wished to watch, and I discovered that there were subtleties no overspeech could deliver. For example, the English seemed not to require a comedian to speak like a young girl or an idiot to be funny; they left their humour in the words and the performance.

That did not mean they were always funny, of course. The English are very strange people, who laugh at very strange things. There was one character, a Bean, and his humour was mostly visual, almost like French film: a M Hulot who shaved badly, perhaps. Other things were harder to understand, especially when they used accents from those parts of England with strong voices, such as Wales or Scotland, and I struggled to hear the words before I could comprehend the humour.

The classes, though: Pascale showed me those first with the sense of wonder, the delight in a new opportunity undimmed by the realisation of the work that would be necessary, and then we met the older students. Those were the ones who chose to study the subject, who truly wished to learn and engaged with the labour it involved. They were the extremities of a wide country of attitudes, from open eyes to open minds. It was those in the middle who became my challenge, the ones my skills were most necessary for, and the most frustrating.

I saw many who could have come directly from my old school without being changed in any way apart from some small changes in their mode of dress or the names of the singers who hissed loudly from the earpieces of their pocket music machines. They were neither voluntarily with us nor new to the routine of study, but bundles of hormones seeking gratification. All that I could see at first were the fists and feet that had tormented me, the voices that had accused. Pascale saw.

We were in the escape room, and she spoke to me over some poor coffee.

“Sophie, you have issues still, not so, with the teenaged boys?”

I could feel the pink in my face. “It is memories, Pascale”

“I understand, but these are not the ones who abused you, no? Take Jean-Pierre, for an example, Suchet, he is a problem, no? Always talking, always making the fool?”

“Yes, he is one. He never seems to be in any hurry to learn from us”

“Do you see where his eyes rest, Sophie? On the red girl, that Nadine Delaport, no? J-P has never had a little friend, has always been small, and now he grows, and the hair comes to his face. Last year his voice changed, but not always was it so, and he had to be the fool, the clown, as he grew too quickly, not so? And now, now he feels his piece grow in his underwear every time he sees Nadine, and he must sit in a certain way to ease the pressure. He does not know how to speak to her, but speak to her he must, so what emerges is stupidity, silliness, and he believes the films”

She grinned, and touched my arm. “Those films of the guns and cars, no? Where the man who gains the woman he desires must be as that American in the dirty vest whose hair has gone, with a bad joke and a gun, no?”

The grin became broader, and then she laughed. “Sophie, may I say something personal?”

“Of course, Pascale”

Her face became soft. “I am aware of your previous life, my dear. You know that, not so? It is at times like this, however, that I see exactly how little boyhood ever existed within you. These boys, they are a different species, no?”

I had to laugh at that, and the mood was brighter. “Pascale, I have spent years studying one foreign language, so at some point I should perhaps learn to understand that of the males!”

“It will become useful when you secure one for yourself, my dear!”

She saw my face change, of course, and so I had to explain all, and she was kindness made flesh.

“Sophie, this is the present, not so? This is where we must live, now and working for the future. You are not that schoolgirl, not now, you are Mlle Laplace, the prof, and…and you have all the right bits to avoid embarrassment. In ten years, will J-P still stammer over Nadine, or will he be a man, confident, with a grown woman beside him? And you, you were---forgive me. You were but a child, and so newly a woman, no, with this Benny?”

She gave an embrace to me. “Sophie, trust me in this, for I was also a girl, slow to understand the other species. This Benny, he will either reach his own adulthood or he will not. Many, many men never become adult, but stay locked into their childishness forever, and they produce children, and we must try and bring them to their maturity despite their fathers’ failings. That is your challenge, my girl, your duty as a teacher. Benny, he will either see or he will not, but you will grow”

She was, of course, right, and over the next months I learned to look beyond the leather blouse or the stupid hat, or the jean belted below the behind, and I did my best to find the child in each and help them to learn. That was my role, that was my duty.

Christmas came once again, and we made of it a true family event, as we had those years before. We had two households now, two mistresses of their own home, and it was so touching how my sister tried her very best to persuade our mother to let her prepare the feast for the holy day itself. Maman pretended to bristle with pride.

“Who is the mother here?”

Rollo lay back in the sofa with a beer, shirt as loose as ever. “You are, of course, but that will not always be true, eh, Maggie?”

Maman stared at him. “This is true? Maggie is…?”

Margot made no with her head. “No, Maman…”

Our mother started up at this. It was the first time she had heard that word from my sister. Margot smiled.

“No, Maman, I am not with child. I have studies to pursue yet, and they will take a couple of years, but yes, once we are settled, once I am finished, we will seek children of our own”

Papa looked across at Rollo, the way he reclined, and laughed. “I will assume, however, that you are practising hard in how to procure these future children?”

As one, Margot and I shouted “PAPA!” but Rollo, he just lay back and smiled, in a very satisfied way, and looked at the smile with which my mother answered his.

“Ah, and Guillaume, we are not the only diligent students at this activity, no?”

My mother’s smile said it all, and I remembered her words, years before, as she pursued her affair of convenience with the doctor on my behalf. She was a woman, mature, not old, and Papa was a man, and far from too old, and…

In the end, Margot succumbed, and we had our dinner at the old house for the holy day, and a meal at the sunflower house, as I increasingly thought of it, for St Sylvestre. The Clermonts joined us, and the Gilets, and it was then that Elle announced that her own practice had borne fruit, and they were due an addition to their household in July as a best guess. So we celebrated the death of that old year, and the new life that came to the calendar and to my oldest friend. One Christmas only, just one, surpassed for me the joy of that year’s, and that had been my first, with my new shoes that were already old, filled with small gifts from my family. And it was only because that year had indeed been the first that it outshone others.

School called to me once more, in the mist and cold, the rain and the bits of hard ice that blew in from the sea, and I held the Christmas joy to me as a warmth to see me through the Winter and reach deeper to the souls of my pupils. Pascale was using me as she had described that day she enlisted me to work with the English people, to help those most in need of my aid rather than ease smoothly through my work with the gifted. I worked with them too, and it was wonderful, for they grew wings and flew further than I could have imagined, but it was the slower students who gave me my rewards.

There are joys in teaching, and the purest is to see the comprehension dawn in the eyes of a child who has been condemned as unable to learn. I worked like that all through that school year, all through the Spring and into the beginnings of the Summer, and at least three of those I struggled with achieved marks for a Bacca that astonished them.

It was so simple, in the end. They were dressed as hoodlums, and they spoke as if they were in bad films, but what I saw was myself. These were not gangsters hiding in the dark to attack and violate, these were children wearing a costume. They were myself, for I had worn Serge so badly for so many years I understood the need for hiding, and I could see further than their skin or their costume.

It was that day, the end of the school year, that I saw what the joys of my work were. That last day, when all of our class had departed and Pascale and I were left in the room alone to sigh and stretch our bodies, and there was a knock at the classroom door.

In came Mohammed Benazzi, one of our leather clothed boys, with the scarf tied about his head under the cap that claimed to come from New York, and he had his hands behind his back, and I am sure that if his skin had not been so dark I would have seen the blush that was surely there. He came up to me, and stammered out a few words.

“Mademoiselle, it has been…you have…my father, he is pleased, and without you…”

There were flowers, in a great bundle, and a card to say thank you, and the flowers were slightly damaged from being all day in his locker, but I did not care. I kissed his cheek and he almost ran from the classroom.

Pascale just smiled. “You see?”

So, as July arrived we bundled all into two cars, all five of us, and we set out on the journey, which brought us past cities and fields and a cheap room, until the familiar shape of the Canigou reared before us as the sea glinted under the blue of the air. Roser awaited, and as she saw my smile she returned it.

“So my granddaughter has finally returned to me?”

CHAPTER 37
We were staying, of course, in Thierry’s hotel, and this time it was as proper guests, as we had our earnings now. I did realise that our bills were not as they would have been for the other guests, but then I felt we were more friends than customers. So typical; we ate that first evening on the terrace, looking at the sea, with lemon candles burning to keep the other insects away as the cigalles chanted in the branches around us, and Maman, she could not keep away from the kitchen.

Until the main dish was served, which was naturally cargolade, she was up and down as if she was on a piece of rubber attached to that room. Only when we had finished the course, and there were cheeses, and a glass of the Banyuls red, was she relaxed with us.

Roser and Jaume were with us that evening, and Jaume’s wife, Celestina, and there was much gossip and sharing of news. This was the first time Rollo and my sister had met my newly-declared grandmother, and Roland did not disappoint.

“There is perhaps a range of ladies available for this task, no? Where one can inspect for miles on the odometer, or the condition of the tyres? Perhaps take for a test drive?”

I looked at him sharply, as Roser held back her laughter. “Rollo, dear brother, how does one test drive a grandmother?”

As ever, he was leaning back in his chair, shirt open, that beautiful face smiling as his wife rested against him after the meal.

“It is simple, my sister. We pass, perhaps, a time at the shore, where there are amusements and ice cream, and we see what quality of treat we are served, how well the prospective grand lady delivers treats and gifts. And perhaps, in true Norman wisdom, we have the option to return them, if at Christmas their performance is not quite…”

I do not know whose morsel of bread hit him first, but I threw, and Maman, and Margot was tickling his sides, and it was all very childish and so, so wonderful. We calmed, at last, and Rollo sat upright, his wife’s hand in his, and looked at Roser with a softer smile.

“Roser, we thank you for this. I thought, when I collected my sister from that train, that she was dead to us, dead to the life that had sung in her, and I feel that perhaps all would have been gone if she had not had friends beside her. I thank you, we thank you, her family. We will drink this to you”

And he raised his glass, as did we all, and we turned to her, and said her name, and drank the sweet red wine that had already set my mind slightly adrift from my body. Roser actually blushed, but there were smiles there.

“Rollo, all of you, this girl, she is come to me from nowhere one Summer, she is so gentle, so modest, and a delight…no, Sophie, I speak now, si? And my Jaume here, he know what she is, but no problem is there, for we see what she REALLY is, not what a stupid medico decree. Then she comes back to me, and she is wounded, and so wounded she sees nothing beyond her nose. There are whole years she forgets, they pass, they go, and she does not move with them. And…”

She reached for my hand, and for that of Maman. “I send her home to you, I care, I fear, that she might not have strength to come back, so I must pray to the Good Saviour, and His Saints, that she has the family. And I know the mother, Julienne, no? That she is so strong, and I pray every day for the healing, and…”

She had tears now. “This, this is the hot time, the Summer, but this is my Christmas gift. My little modest girl, returned, whole”

Maman and I embraced her, and Jaume raised his glass.

“May I? A drink, then, to family, for that is what we are and what keeps us afloat in the world!”

Maman had the smile of a devil when she put down her glass.

“Roser, you said ‘modest’, no? Perhaps she is not as modest, now she is whole”

The older woman frowned. “It is not of cobwebs and string, this new thing, is it?”

My own blush was enough answer. Margot had chosen it for me, and it was so small, and so thin, in two parts, but she had insisted. And it was another threshold I had to cross: no longer was there a piece there, an ugly tube, but the reality of my femininity. It resisted still, as I used the devices from the doctors, but it was there and I was healed and whole, as I should have been born. I do not wish to discuss such intimate details, but there are things I must acknowledge, and the presence of new anatomy is one of them.

It is strange; I looked at my piece and I had never wanted it, nor the jewels that accompanied it. I can talk about it, I can say what a deformity it was, they were, and it is gone. Its absence is important, and outweighed only by the many years I had to carry it with me. My new arrangements, though; they are intimate in all senses. That flesh was attached to me, and the new flesh is part of me. To speak, in detail, of it would be like discussing the shape of my mother’s breasts with a random unknown. But it made so many things possible, at least in the area of clothing.

And so we had our time of sun and sand, of the clear water which Maggie shared with me when she was not with her husband, and even though I was without my own lover I took solace and comfort in the knowledge that all four were sharing love and practising its expression. There was a word that spoke to me as I looked at them, how they behaved, how their faces moved, and it was serenity. They had found passion, and then stepped past it, but as they passed they took it up and with them.

I thought long and often, as we lay in the sun or walked in the hills, and it was almost resignation, acceptance. I had finally won my proper anatomy, but the lover, the wonderful man, he would not be there for me. I had grown so tall, and sometimes my laughter was wry but genuine. My feet were large, but my piece, dearest Elle, was certainly not in keeping with them. And then, at last, came the post.

We had made the forms, completed them. I had seen the lawyers, and the functionaries, and my doctor had written his notes, and...we had the post, directed from our sunflower house to our holiday home, and it was there, small, and blue, with a photograph which showed very little paint to my face, but that card, it bore the letter, the sixth in the alphabet, and I wept, of course.

That night was the first time I drank so much that I lost some memories for an hour or two after awakening. We celebrated perhaps too well, but it was the smile on Maggie’s face the next morning that caught my attention.

“Maman…”

“Yes, Maggie?”

“Did you not tell us that when you were first here you looked at Spain, from the road, but did not enter? Because of her CNI?”

Papa smiled. “Ah, yes. Rollo, when must you return?”

“I have but two more weeks, Guillaume”

“Then I must speak with Thierry”

He left us as we lay on our towels, two of us in the infamous cobwebs and strings, and was gone for an hour. I looked at Maman after twenty minutes, and she just smiled. I realised, slowly, that something was afoot, perhaps planned between the others as I slept away my drunkenness. Papa took his hour, and on his return he simply smiled at me, and as I had with my brother I saw why he was so loved.

“Dearest sweet Papa…? You have been planning something, no?”

“I have been researching on the internet, Sophie my sweet, and profitably. We shall go just a little further than you could see from that roadside, and we shall allow Thierry four days respite from our presence”

“Where, Papa?”

“Barcelona, my sweet. We have rooms, we have places on the train”

I was like a small child with my voice, just then, but looked around at the smiles, and calmed.

“You all knew, no? All of you!”

Maggie came to me for an embrace. “We did not know when or if your new card might arrive, and so we researched the places, and the promotions in room prices before the August people, and spoke to the hotel, and…”

My mother let slip one tear only, before she smiled once again. “My darling, you could not go before. Now, you leave France as a woman, but, more importantly, when you return, it is as a woman, and a woman officially recognised as one. You enter your country as we all know you should have entered your life”

We embraced, and she released me to reach into her bag, producing a small red book.

“Besides, Thierry knows the chief of the kitchen at the hotel, and I shall be taking notes for our return!”

CHAPTER 38
There was a train, to the border, and another, in that scruffy place Maman and I had visited, and that train rattled along from the mountains to the flatter areas, streams beneath the tracks that were sometimes dry, sometimes halted in green pools. Eventually we arrived at the edge of the great city, where the train dove under the streets like a dolphin in the waves.

“Sants!” was the announcement, and the five of us hauled our luggage from the train and up into the heat and the shade of the tall buildings. I was, stupidly, in a pair of sandals made of leather straps, and the heel was too high, so I looked hard at Papa hoping for a taxi.

“It is not far, my sweet”

It was indeed nearby, the Hotel Expo, and it was clean, and neat, and to Maggie’s delight it had a swimming pool on the roof. Three rooms, we had, and while they were not the most charming of chambers they were clean, and safe, and we had our place for each night. My sister wanted to experience the pool immediately, but my brother insisted that we had so much to see we must start now, so I changed my silly shoes for the comfortable ones and Papa led us to a Metro station as soon as he could separate Maman from the kitchen. At least he led us towards the station, but passed it, reading from a little book as he walked. We came to a little park, and with a flourish indicated a…thing. It was curved, it was tall, it was…

“Ladies, I give you the work of the Catalan artist Joan Mirá³!” said Papa with a flourish.

“This piece is called something in Catalan which means ‘Lady with a bird’, but round here…”

He became as a conspirator. “Round here, it is called ‘The three metre godemichet’ “

I felt the red to my face. It was tall, perhaps not three metres, and there were parts extra to it, but it was indeed a larger twin to those plastic utensils my doctors had insisted I use. Margot stared, and smiled, and then turned to my mother.

“Who are you, and where have you placed my real Papa?”

I understood, for she was speaking of this man who held humour and mirth in himself, who was joyous in his life, and not of the poor shadow who had lived on only through his work and his child. This was a man set free.

Of course, we took a great many silly photographs of the thing, before entering the metro station, with all the signs warning of fines for smoking, but with a tobacco shop on the platform underground. We were whisked out to emerge on a long and gently curving street filled with places to eat and drink, the Ramblas, and finally, just as my thirst was growing, the harbour, where a statue stood atop a high pillar. Papa had his book once more.

“That is the statue of Colon, Columbus, yes? Pointing to the Americas. Except it is towards Libya”

More pictures, and a delightful wooden walkway into the harbour, where there were shops, and an aquarium (we did not enter) and a bar that sold fresh fruit juice, which we did. Many more pictures, and a fresh breeze, and then a cable car to the top of the hill we could see from our hotel and finally, finally, after a long morning, we had a lunch, of a salad with palm hearts and paprika-rich saucisson, with beers for the men and a kir (with some explanation) for each of the women. Papa had his book open throughout, and as I ate a crá¨me brulée that the menu insisted was actually ‘catalan’, he gave us his plan.

“This is Montjuic, ladies, a famous place in the city. There are many things to see here, including the stadium from the Olympic games and the palace of Catalan culture, but what I wish to see is the sound and light. There are fountains, streams, that descend the hill by a flight of broad stairs, and if we indulge ourselves here, take our evening meal on the mountain, then we can descend those steps to watch the fireworks and listen to the music, as they make the waters dance. The book says it is a magical thing”

And so our afternoon and early evening were consumed with the joys of the stadium, and the museum, but it was the sitting in silence that was the day’s treasure. My parents, my siblings, they had moved beyond words, and their lives were lived together in a place that needed no speech, and they carried me with them. We held each other together in our own world, and I was content.

In the end, however, it was taking too long for the evening to fall, and so we descended those broad steps and found a restaurant, and ate more interesting things, until the waiter whispered to Papa. The bill was brought, and we exited to see crowds of people all facing in one direction, just as the lights came on, and the fountains rose, and there was indeed sound, and light, and magic.

And in the crowd, just as I stood and made my mouth open and close in wonder, somebody caressed my behind.

Three days we had, to absorb the strange things that seemed to be on every corner, such as a mammoth in a park, and dragons and lizards on walls, and an unfinished cathedral that resembled something found in an opium dream, or LSD, but it is all in books such as Papa carried. Suffice it to say that we led a family life in a lovely place, and ate well, and perhaps, with the drinking, occasionally too well, and as Papa emptied his book of wonders, Maman tried to fill hers.

All too soon, we needed to board another train for our return, and soon after Maggie must needs kiss her husband goodbye for his return North for the passports and the English tourists. She kissed him goodbye for a very long time before he could free himself, with reluctance, and drive away, and of course I lost my bed, for I was needed in hers to fill the emptiness his departure had forced upon her. I noticed one thing: the limitations Maman had placed upon me with the telephone card were not ones for Margot. She spoke to him every day, and each day there were tears. I held her to me one night, in the small hours before dawn but after midnight.

“Is this all you expected, my sister? All you hoped for when you made your choice, that first time your eyes fell upon him?”

She embraced me more tightly. “More than I dreamt, Sophie. Much more, for I have a sister, a true sister, and Papa…he is healed and whole once more. What woman could ever desire more of life, apart from the children to come?”

There was a small tremor there, and I smiled as I held her myself more tightly.

“My sweet, I have my own children, and I return them at the end of each day, so I do believe I have the advantage, no?”

She had no answer beyond a kiss, for there was none possible, not even to a Norman girl.

The leavetaking, and tears from Roser as well as Jaume, was awkward, for there was something unsaid between Thierry and Maman. It wasn’t the looks of the young boys for the girls in my school, but something else. We stopped for a night’s rest somewhere in the centre of France, and I took Maman to one side in the WCs.

“What is it that passes between you and Thierry, Maman? I only ask this because I know that for you it will not be THAT, for you, you and Papa…”

She looked into the mirror as she did unnecessary things to her face and hair.

“Sophie, it is something I have been unsure about for some time, but Thierry, he insists on asking. I had first thought…”

She stopped and placed her hands either side of the hand basin, and turned her eyes to mine.

“”My sweet, it was when you were lost, and I did not know how to find you. I wondered whether you would ever return from here, and though I knew…though I am now certain Roser held you safe, I could not be away from you, from my flesh, forever. Thierry and I discussed a business together, where I would help in the kitchen for him, and be near you”

A woman who had worked as a cleaner, as a drudge for me, she was ashamed of her love.

“Maman, this helping in the kitchen, it is not true, no?”

“Well…not quite”

“This would be chief in the kitchen, would it not?”

My mother can blush. I asked her very gently the obvious question. “And Papa? He would have done what, exactly?”

“He would have made his choice, my sweet”

She grinned, suddenly adolescent in her delight. “And he did, and he has an offer as a manager in Perpignan, of the big shop there, because he trusts our own boy, and Sophie, oh my darling, OH how he loves me!”

CHAPTER 39
I walked into the school once more, that September, and it felt right, true. This was where I belonged, what the Lord had made me for. I was so like my mother, for she had found her own place in the world, her own purpose and joy in her kitchens, and I had my children.

That was how it felt, for while my brother and sister would have their own, I had mine to greet each day and send home tired in the afternoon. Pascale was awaiting me in the little place of calm and safety, with a coffee ready.

“Your holiday, it went well?”

“Very! And…well, it went better now that I, you know…”

I waved my hands at that general area of my body, and Pascale embraced me.

“New year, new woman, no? Now, let us look at the lists of children”

Once more I was immersed in the world of bright eyes and large hopes, of being an adult to the children even though I still saw myself as a child, and as the days shortened and the weather became cooler I reflected each day on how very fortunate I truly was. Just like Maman, indeed.

Elle and Matty had produced a small bundle of feminine delight (in their eyes), or a smelly and noisy creature in my own, and we held a christening and naming ceremony, where of course I wept, as the child became Françoise Sophie, and I pledged myself to be her mother before God, as Elle herself declared me an aunt and intimate part of her, their, family.

Christmas once more, and I left out my shoes, and they were still those old ones, my first formalities, my first shoes for a woman and not a child. I stood in the kitchen at one instant, and the tears came, as I thought of how many years I had discarded in my shame and despair, years I could never recover. The future, then, that lay ahead, a future with love at least of the family, and perhaps…perhaps there might be another for me, perhaps a Benny who did not run.

And so, once more, in the big house, there was fat liver, and sheep droppings, and a nice Auvergne blue that I prefer to the Roquefort, and Papa making the announcement.

“My children! Your mother and I must speak. We have a date, and a place to rest for a while, but the Noon is calling to us, and we cannot deny it any longer. It is just those small details we are required to attend to, such as the houses, our children, small matters of no importance. Sophie…what will you do? Is it for you to keep the other house? It will be more than you can afford, but your mother, myself, we are happy to pay for it until you gain your full qualifications”

That was indeed a deep question. My sunflower house, our house, the garden; they were the first places I had ever felt free, the space to allow Sophie to emerge from her disguise and enter the world. Perhaps it would be better to take a smaller apartment closer to my calling, but to give up our garden, that was perhaps a step too far for me.

“When do you leave, Papa?”

“We will go in early June, my sweet. That gives us more than five months to prepare, and leaves us time for your Maman to impose her authority upon her new empire”

“I would stay here, if I may, just for now, and to consider. I have looked at a little motor scooter, perhaps to release me from the bus and the tram”

Rollo muttered something, and Maggie laughed. “He says, you may become a Hell’s Angel, but you will still be his angel”

A kiss to his cheek, and that smile of love and delight that never seemed to be far from her face. I had to make my own joke.

“So, we shall have the time-share thing, then. As I shall no longer have to worry about paying for my Summer holiday, I shall be able to afford my scooter!”

Man leant closer to Papa. “My beloved, did we not make a mistake in our planning? I thought we had intended to leave no address, that we might slip away as the night thief and be free of them at last!”

But Maman, she cannot keep her face serious for long, so there was more laughter, and almost too much wine and calva, and once more it seemed that there could not be much that had been held from us to bring joy.

And so to Spring, and then the edge of Summer as I rode my little blue scooter to my children and the large van took my parents to the sun, and an English phrase shone in my mind. I was living the dream, as they put it. It was more, for while I was in this dream I had woken from nightmares, one after the other, monsters evaporating in morning sunlight. It felt strange, just at first, without the constant presence of my mother to see me awake in the morning and asleep at night, but she had found, rediscovered, her true love and they had a life to live and their own dreams to live. I could not begrudge them anything, for had not this particular dream come from her love for me?

And so I continued as Mlle Laplace, and the true Summer came, and with it those days in the cobwebs and string, or in the courtyard as the cigalles chanted and we laughed over some meal or other, my sister and I, and truly, there was so little left of the Lord’s bounty that I could truly hope for.

And another September, and another embrace on that first day from my dear friend. That was clear: she had taken me as a student, transformed me into a teacher, and then adopted me as a confidante and woman.

“Ah, Sophie, as brown as you always are the first day. It will wash out too quickly, I fear. This year we have no extra days of sun. Now, we have more new faces, naturally, and we must prepare our hearts for the fray. Coffee?”

I took the youngest class that day, and they were a mixture. Some spoke the French quite badly, and I wondered if they were truly ready for the English. Never mind, Sophie, Mlle Laplace, that is your job, your profession. I opened the register of names to call out, and one leapt to my eyes.

Forgeron. Tiffanie Forgeron, written in that way, and I wondered how such a name could have been accepted. The surname, that was a common one, and perhaps…no. They were children. You, Sophie, are their teacher.

I spoke the first phrase in English. “Good morning, children! I am Mlle Laplace, and I shall be teaching you the first little bit of the English that you will not hear from a bad film or a good song. We will be having fun, but there will be some work, alas. Now…”

I began the ritual, writing ‘my name is’ and ‘I am X years old’ on the big board, and taking the children through the words in turn, before turning it around and making them questions. Then the alphabet.

“Yes…Georges?”

“Mlle Laplace, why do they say ‘G’ and ‘J’ the wrong way round?”

“They do a lot of things the wrong way round. They put their adjectives---describing words---before their nouns, for example. It is because they are foreign, after all, but they are not as bad as the Germans”

I left that one to hang in the air, just for an instant, and before the wars could be mentioned I explained.

“The Germans, children, when they speak of anything other than the right now, they keep their verbs, their doing words, until the very end of the sentence, so that one must wait, in suspense, to find out what someone is actually doing. It makes conversation a little like a story, where you have to wait for the ending. The roast beefs, they do not do that, so be thankful!”

And the lesson went on, and I told them of their ancestors, how they had tamed the English, and how the animals the English tended remained English whilst their flesh became French, and I knew all along, as I did every day, that this was what I was formed for. Giving knowledge, with a smile, and games, and laughter, but all the time helping the small faces to learn, to grow. As I did so, I looked at little Tiffanie, and yes, the limns were there, the turn of jaw, the shape of the nose. Her father would have been very young at her birth, but that fitted so well with what I remembered. Girls, they were for his use and disposal. If he were her father, would he still be in her life?

New days, Sophie, new world. Move forward with it, and in it..

CHAPTER 40
The talk in that class began after that next Christmas had passed. It was nothing that was immediately noticed by myself, but when one looks back to an earlier time the vision may often be clearer than it was at that initial moment. It was later that I saw, later in my years that I could place a marker on my calendar and say, yes, that was the instant, that was the beginning.

It was a growing distance, between the youngest of my charges and myself. I had grown to love the eyes of that group, their openness and wonder, but it was drifting, quitting their faces. There would be whispers as I entered, not the usual assault upon my hearing that is the sound of a class of infants before their teacher delivers them to silence and leads them to learning. It was another month before I saw the first stares from the older boys.

Christmas had been a delight, for my parents had made the journey from the sand and the edge of the mountains, and to my astonishment they had brought a friend in the aeroplane that had carried them from Perpignan to Carpiquet, and the big house was lit up with the laughter of my adopted grandmother, who had, naturally, to bring gifts of food and of the special saucissons in particular, made of the wild pig and of the fighting bull. We made that day a truly special one, because the Gilets and the Clermonts were invited. That was important, said Maman.

“Sophie, my sweet little one, the feast is one of a child, and it is for other children, not so? You are now a responsible professional woman. We must have at least one child to make the day more fitting”

Then she laughed, and smiled, and told me that however I grew, however I were to present myself, I was always and forever her child, her infant, her Empress of the universe. That was a moment I treasure still: she wrote again the story of Serge, his infancy, and made it Sophie’s.

Françoise Sophie made me smile, for that was what her mother called her when making an effort to be stern, which was not something my dear friend could ever perform with conviction and authority. The child had learnt some words, which seemed mostly to consist of “No!” and “Why?”, but we answered as best we could. Four generations came together for the grand meal, and it was as it should be. I put the same, beloved old shoes out for the Father to fill that night, and after the guests departed in deference to the age of a little girl, we sat as a family with drinks to occupy our hands and each other to sit against. Once again, it was the Christmas time that brought me sweetness, joy.

It was with sharp feelings of loss that we saw all three off once more, for their visit had reminded me of how very precious their love was, of how I had nearly remained cut adrift from it in my grief, what seemed then so very, very long before. Nevertheless, despite the tears that Maggie and I released, and that I am sure my brother only just managed to retain, they had to depart, and our own new lives had to continue.

Maggie was working through the next stages of her own staircase of academic qualifications, much as I was gaining my own via the school and Pascale, but I saw her face over the Christmas meal, and her eyes were for the smallest of our guests. I had embraced her as they left.

“Sophie, am I selfish? I would have the children, Rollo desires them, but, it is hard, I must study, I must…Rollo speaks of this, Papa too. They say we must rise above, each generation, rise above the last. My darling, he says that he will await the right time…”

The pink came to her face. In a whisper: “As long as he can do as much practice as possible”

Memories arose once more, of a night when two women had joined their men, became united. And once more, as it always did, I saw my blond in the eyes of my memory.

Once more to school, in the rain on my little blue scooter, and there was the writing, just where I would leave my vehicle, on the wall, in paint. It was one single word: homosexual. Not that actual word, but a slang word that meant the same, and worse. It was at the height of my eyes, so that as I stood to remove my casket it met my vision like a slap to my cheek.

I could not be sure if it was meant for me, but it was too high to be the writings of one of my youngest children. I found the caretaker as I entered the building, and reported it, and by the time I had finished for the day it had been removed.

The next day the writing said “Cocksucker”, and I now lost my doubts. Pascale was disturbed.

“Do you have enemies, my little one?”

It surely could not come to this. I told her of the history of Forgeron, his friends, of Benny.

“I suspect the little Tiffanie, she is his child. I do not know if he is still in any contact with her, Pascale, but if she has told him the name of her teacher, then perhaps he is in some way the instigator”

She shook her head. “That child’s father is in the prison at this moment, for a violent robbery in Rouen. I do not know if his child has gone there, as a visitor”

She smiled, and put her hand upon my arm. “Sophie, I must know these things of my charges. It is my job, no? I will enquire, but first we shall see if there is not a security method we can employ. After all, this is damage of a criminal nature to the fabric of the school. Go to your children; I will speak to the concierge and the secretary”

The children were still once more as I came in, with but a few whispers. I sought the eyes of young Tiffanie, and she did not disappoint me, looking away and blushing. I put on my brightest expression, my most cheerful mien, and made the class my own once more.

It was Georges, though, at the end, the little boy of questions and puzzlement, who sat longest as the others left for their next lesson. He it was who had the first of what would become a deluge of interrogation on the same theme.

“Mademoiselle…is it true? What they say, the girls?”

I lowered myself to speak more directly to his face. “Is what true, Georges?”

“That you change boys into girls?”

That was so very different from the question I had anticipated that I burst forth into laughter, which I then had to explain was not at the expense of the poor child.

“Georges, my sweet, nobody can change a boy into a girl, nor a girl into a boy. Are you a boy?”

“Yes, of course I am!”

“Am I a girl? A woman”

“But of course!”

“Can you become me, or me you?”

“That would be silly”

“Then how silly was that tale you brought me? Do you believe that there are hares that bring eggs made of chocolate?”

“No, they are brought from the shop by Papa! That’s a story for little children”

His contempt for infant credulity was evident in his face. I smiled. “Georges, that was another tale to entrap the ears of the smaller children. Besides, why would I ever wish to turn such a brave boy into a girl? Now, off you go”

I sent him after the others, my smile false but carefully secured to my lips as I watched him leave. Forgeron, you son of a whore, that was my thought, and it came with a wrench to my heart, that I did not have my gentle man to place Forgeron on his behind, where he belonged.

The whispering seemed to stop for a while, and I am certain it was because Georges asserted his declared maturity and belittled the little minds who still believed in the Easter hare or the Father Christmas, and for a month things were nearly as they were. There were hard little glances from that girl, but I repaid them with my own stares, and I had the hatred for her father to feed me. But, still, the moment came, and Pascale asked to speak to me.

“Sophie, I must talk privately, but I will say before anything else is uttered that you have my full support”

We entered a small classroom, empty for the moment, and she turned away, to look out of the window at some imaginary view.

“I knew this might come, my sweet girl, but it is still not a welcome thing. It is the first letter from one of the parents, I believe a friend of that Forgeron you spoke of. They wish you gone, as a Godless pervert, away from their child”

CHAPTER 41
“Who was it, Pascale?”

“It was not Forgeron, but I do believe they may be acquainted. They are from the same part of the city”

“So what must I do?”

She smiled at me, a little sadly, I thought. “Nothing, my sweet. The Directorate of the school, as well as the Mairie, are fully aware of your…situation. The law is the law, and this is France, and it is the law that we follow, no?”

I explained to her about Georges, and the perception that I was somehow either malicious or infectious.

“But you turned him around, Sophie, no? You sent him back to his peers to explain that they were but foolish children? I do not see you as the Easter hare, for all that chocolate would surely have added greatly to your weight. Do not worry: I will speak. Now, it is early to speak of this, but are you to depart south once more this Summer? I would have a use for you, once more, with the people from the Open, if you wished?”

That was a decision I needed time to consider, for it would mean a Summer apart from my family. I had done that already, of course, but it had been when Sophie had collapsed into despair, and even now, even with this letter, this complaint, I was no longer that woman. I had strength, I had the understanding and love of my family. I thought of Janet, in her lust for my dear brother, and smiled.

“Pascale, I rather feel that such a Summer would be a very nice one”

She smiled. “I would hope so, for you would have your own class, not just act as an aide. Sophie, I saw this in you, that first time. Teaching, educating, it is something you do as naturally as drawing your breath. You know the meaning of 'educate', no? That is what you do: you do not imprint, you draw out the best your children have. Remember Benazzi?”

She smiled, and gave me an embrace. “This letter, this silliness, we shall speak to the people who deal with this and it shall melt away with the sun. Now, you have the bigger ones next, no?”

She was as good as her word, and apart from the occasional pout from the Little Miss Forgeron, things seemed to become quieter for a pair of months. Large notices and visible cameras now covered the school’s entrances, and my little blue scooter had found a place in the store room of the maintenance workers.

I thought back to my earlier years, how Forgeron and his companions in malice had made such a thing of riding their little scooters, such a show of machismo, and to me it was one of the most feminine things I owned. Then again, the Scotch men wore their own skirts, and nobody accused them of daintiness. A complicated world, indeed.

The Easter hare, or so it was claimed, came and went, and of course I had to deliver my own eggs to my little god daughter, who was growing rapidly. Not such a bundle of noise and smells, but more a person, and I could see so much in the faces, for the child’s love of her parents shone like the sun at our beach, and Matty, he seemed to melt in its warmth, become softer than I had ever seen. Elle made efforts, each time I saw her, either to be the practised woman of maturity, or else my tiny and over-excitable friend, but each time she failed, because she now had a focus beyond telling. She was friend, she was daughter, she was wife, but she was above all mother, maman, and that was where her own glow shone from her.

It was strange, for I felt no envy of her ability, her motherhood, for as I had told her so long ago I had my own children, my own delights, and I did not really have a desire to deal with crying and filthy napkins. But just…just, every now and again, there was a tiny stab to my heart, that I could not take that step, that my choice was not there. And each time, every time, I remembered him. I watched Maggie, at those times, and I saw more in her, for she wanted a child, children, and yet her men saw clearly, and unselfishly. Our girl must be allowed to realise the potential that lived within. Not just wife and mother, as Elle had chosen, but more. It was at those times that I saw how my sweet brother, my dear Papa, how they cared so deeply for her.

The full Spring surged out, and then the blossoms announced the beginning of the examination preparations, and I found myself absorbed beyond distraction. I had another Benazzi, of a different name but of the same character, one who had been told of his lack of worth until he believed it. He was from a family that had dealt in cooked meat for generations, and the concept of learning was even more foreign than the language I taught him. I found the key to his door in an unusual place, for I saw his interest in the nature around him, and the teacher of natural sciences spoke to me of his animation in that class.

There is a series of books by one Hugh Lofting, and they told of a man who strove to learn languages, but those of a pig, a dog, many different animals, and as I helped young Gaston through the stories he began to move ahead, and I had hopes that were realised at last one Monday even before his Bacca.

He was all shyness, and I smiled to myself at a memory of bent and slightly crushed flowers from a boy dressed as a gangster

“Mlle Lapalace…may I say something?”

“Of course, Gaston!”

“It is…the last two days, Papa he took us, my brothers and myself, to Portsmouth, to sell things to the English, that market in the Gun Wharf, yes? The ferry, it is dear, but our prices, well…”

He was grinning, and I smiled back. “That was not what you wished to tell me, that you are a shopkeeper of sharp practice and inflated prices, no?”

His face became more serious. “No, it is not that, though it is true. It was Papa…we had the customers, and he has always worked with the grunt and the lift of the eyebrow, yes? But this time, I spoke to them, and I could explain what each meat was, the making of the saucisson, and we finished with more money in our little chest than he had ever seen, he says, and he looked at me…”

There were movements in his face. “He said that he did not see why, if this thing, this English, makes us so much money, if it does, that I should not continue, that I should not take higher studies, at Jean Monnet, for I said that it was my teacher, she who had done this, and it had been her school…”

And he ran out of his store of words, and abruptly seized me to place his lips to my cheek before dashing away while wiping at his eyes. Pascale had seen the exchange.

“You see, Sophie? That is your metier, your skill. How much of what you have done for that boy has been prescribed in the official syllabus? No, no, my sweet, that was no criticism. You have educated, drawn forth, no? Do I then have you for the Summer?”

I had to smile, and accept. We continued to work together for more mundane things, though, for the Baccas and other examinations were soon upon us, and it was only what I now saw in myself, my passion, that carried me through the heavy work and the continuing sneers of Tiffanie Forgeron. I would catch her stare, and then immediately see the glare returned from little Georges. It was not finished, but it seemed to be at least quiescent.

Examinations finished, my Summer holiday became devoted to preparing for the arrival of the rosbifs. I had to drag Pascale aside, physically, at one point.

“We must speak. You have said nothing, for months, about a subject that is clearly not a closed book”

She looked away from me, and that was a first, to see my assured teacher and friend uncertain. I knew, at that moment.

“There was more than one complainant, not so?”

She sighed, and nodded.

“How many?”

“Eight families have complained. No, Sophie, see it not like that. These are families whose infants are not disciplined, not well-behaved. They seek to use you as the excuse for their children’s, their own failings, and I have told them they were failing long before your arrival”

There was a flash of a grin. “I actually told Mireille Gaultier, mother of that little trollop Yvette, to go bugger herself in her own arsehole, but perhaps that was not done with a witness to hear”

She pulled herself up straighter, placing her hands on my shoulders before giving me the kisses.

“You are my teacher, Mlle Laplace. I protect my own. Do not worry. Now, we have the English to welcome…”

Once more I took a little room in that tower, and the classes were as delightful, even if Laurent’s jokes were the same and the songs for the music evening as banal. Each Thursday, they got very drunk and there was most definitely a lot of sex, but I was above such things as a lofty lecturer to adults. Janet had returned for another experience, and there was a sigh when I mentioned Rollo’s wedding, so of course he had to visit for a drink and some worship from the next stool at the bar. Tactfully, Maggie was left at home.

“Sophie, I met someone today” he offered, as Janet went to ease herself.

There was one of his delightful smiles attempting to invade his face. “Do you remember that English, Welsh girl I told you about? The one like you? She was back again, with her husband, and another, one more like you, and HER husband, yes? Do you see, now, how things can happen? We have an invitation to England, if we wish, but I do not wish to travel alone, or with Maggie, because we do not speak the English, and so you, my sweet sister, you have a duty to perform, no?”

Sweet, sweet Rollo. So transparent to the eyes of women. I decided, just then, that perhaps we could think of this visit, some day. But, just then, I had pupils, and work, and enthusiasm to deliver.

At the end of that year’s Open University, it was finally time to leave my little cell of a room and return to my last days of rest in the sunflower house. More children to meet in September, another Christmas ahead of us: where was the time running away to?

I parked my little blue scooter just inside the gate, and stared. Every single sunflower was down on the soil, broken. THAT word was painted on my door.

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

CHAPTER 43
The meeting with the Direction at the school had, with the benefit of hindsight, been amusing in a very perverse way. Pascale and I had sat down, facing the board of six Directors across a table which bore coffee and small vienneses, and a mantle of politeness and courtesy had been drawn across the affair as a cloak against night chills.

There were accusations. Of course, there was no substance to them, I was a good and proper teacher, and there was no suggestion that I could or would have, in any way…What suggestions? Which accusations? In the end, they had settled upon a cushion of ‘reputation’ and ‘to avoid unpleasantnesses’, which rather failed as a strategy once my mentor began to berate them for such crimes as betrayal and cowardice. We left, in the end, without satisfaction, and Pascale’s nose inclined upwards, and she held that pose until she was seated behind the controls of her car. Laughter then seized her.

“Sophie, their imaginations! What things they might do with all that energy directed correctly! Oh, and that accusation, in the WCs…”

She fell once more into laughter. I knew what she meant, of course, the claim that I would ease myself before the little girls of my class, but standing, my skirts raised to allow…and of course, I had to join her in the laughter. I had lost my place, my children, my very mission in life, but my new strength took me onwards to a new goal. I gave Pascale an embrace, and the kiss, and my new life continued as it was destined to. I gave my best to my students, as they deserved, and I tried my hardest to give back to the people around me the love and joy they continued to surprise me with.

Maggie came round, one day in May, as the late Spring invasion of the English tourists was starting to come to a peak, and she looked at her feet, and the walls, and the sunflowers that were starting to climb once more, and there was pink to her face and a smile of nerve and perhaps fear.

“Sophie…?”

I stood and went to her, and we embraced, for I knew, and all I needed to ask was in one word.

“When?”

Her tears came freely then, but they were tears of utter happiness and delight. “November, my sweet sister. It will be in November, so that I shall sit my tests, my examinations, and we shall have our Summer, and then…oh, my darling one, you will have to be older, for aunts are old and severe, no?”

And so she was slapped on the leg, and I assured her there was no envy. That night, I lay in my bed, in my sunflower house, the place of my rebirth twice over, and sleep did not claim me for some hours. I was not a maternal woman. I did not urge to deliver my own child, although the facility was something I had despaired over. I displaced motherhood to my vocation, delivering what I could to young minds, young hearts, but nevertheless, just to have had the option, the choice that Maggie’s body gave her, that would have been wonderful beyond words.

I still had moments, I have them yet, where despite the changes to my form, the life I have lived, indeed the knowledge that has always resided in my heart of who and what I am, the voice has always whispered ‘Fraud’ and ‘Liar’. That voice is not that of Forgeron, or any of his type, but my own. It is very difficult to mount an argument with oneself, and so I simply tried to ignore its calls to me. At night, though, and especially after Margot’s news, it was a stern fight.

There was a celebration, of course, and absolutely everyone was there, even Fatima with her new husband. How had that happened, how had we missed so much? Time was escaping me, it seemed, my life so filled with incident and reward that I must occasionally place foot to ground and cry halt.

She was slightly embarrassed over her Mehmet, but Elle and Maggie seized her and we took her into the garden of the old house for confrontation and interrogation. Maggie was foremost for once, which was evidence of how Rollo had brought the shy girl forward into maturity.

“Well? Who found this man?”

Fatima smiled gently, but to her feet. “My parents had some men they wanted me to meet, and I said no, that I would not be sold as the lamb on the slab, but they insisted. I must have a man, of substance and status, and I said, with the deepest respect and greatest love, Papa, I said I will have a man of decency and honour, of soul and heart”

Elle pushed forward. “And? Where did you find this man, this Mehmet?”

Fatima laughed, then, laughed freely and happily. “Oh, my friends, that is the funniest thing! One of the suitors my parents brought to me, he was not bad, and he was an accountant, but there was no spark there, but because he does not have the permit to drive his brother brought him and…”

There was a look on her face, and Elle started to laugh. She turned to Maggie, struck a pose with the back of her hand to her forehead, and in a dreamy voice murmured “And he is how old? Tell me he is free!”

We all laughed at the memory, though we needed to tell Fatima, and Elle’s arm was slapped by my sister, and as the laughter eased Fatima quietly said “And his shoes are size 49…”

They had wed in Tangiers, the whole affair a whirlwind of joy, it seemed, and as the brother was a doctor in Rouen, and the introduction had almost been done by her parents, all honour was satisfied. Abdullah had apparently spent some time researching Mehmet’s background, and pronounced himself satisfied.

“He was so pompous about it” said Fatima, “So stern-faced and rigid, and then, oh my brother, then he laughs and says, well, as there was no evidence against him I had nothing that I needed to hide for my sister’s happiness, and, oh my friends, yes, it is wonderful!”

And Spring moved to Summer, the early part, and once more there was a basket of meats brought to the sunflower house, for Gaston had succeeded well with his Bacca. There was a note, this time, from his father, and it simply said that I had shown him that his family could stand higher than they had, reach further, and would I, could I, if the boy could perhaps gain a place at the University…

That was the answer to that small night voice. That was my vindication, my motherhood.

I left the sunflowers under the watchful but wayward eyes of Marck before July, as the academic year ended and the beach called my name, and gathered Maggie and her growing life to me for the trip south. We had made an adjustment in our minds, and that was simple: as we were sisters, then Roser must also be grandmother to Maggie, and therefore this baby would be her great-grandchild. Which naturally meant that our parents must be considered her stepchildren, and Jaume---oh, an idea can only go so far before it becomes a little silly, but there was enough love there to share among all, and it came from all directions.

Cobwebs and string, once more. I had grown to love the immodesty of the Summer sand, much to Roser’s amusement, and Maggie was only just beginning to show her promise, so we took our days in the sun as enthusiastically as ever. I still loved the swimming, the mask over the eyes and the fish flashing in the sunbeams cutting through the clear water, but the rest was always a delight. My mother’s name was not only over the door and written on the card, but apparently spoken of through the town and further, further than I had realised, for when we arrived I was shown one thing, before I had even placed my baggage in my room. It was small, it was on the sign of the hotel, and it was a star, from Michelin.

My mother beamed a huge smile at me. “Not bad for an old floor sweeper from Normandy, no?”

That was a real moment of awakening for me, the realisation that in my focus on my own little world of children and study, the rest of the world continued to turn, other lives were lived. Fatima, my parents, Maggie, they all had their news and their wonders to share. My life was indeed good, and so much better for the other lives that crossed mine. There would be another, I knew, in November.

Rollo joined his wife just as I embarked upon the journey home for my English pupils, and I watched their greeting to each other with a heart that would never grow cold to their display of their absolute love for each other. Always, always there was a little shiver of sadness in me, a memory of a tall blond, but it was not to be. I had my students, I had my vocation. I was fulfilled. I was also amused, of course, for my English were as intense as ever, as drunk as I remembered, and as frantic in their search for copulation. I would sleep in my little cell, marked and unmarked papers spread on the floor, and listen to the sounds of the night. An owl, in the distance. The squeal of the tyres on the tramway. The soft thump-thump-thump of sexual congress in some room on my floor. There were, it seemed, certain eternal truths.

I returned home after the last students had gone, and it was as if I had returned in time. The sunflowers were down, that word was on the door. Marck was there within an hour, and this time he brought a friend, and there were professional photographs taken and a dusting of silver powder on the door. Marck had an edge to his mood.

“The piece of a cunt is out, Sophie. He has been released. Perhaps M. Mouth needs to be introduced to M. Baton”

They left, in the end, and I clung to my new confidence. Family, friends. I was not alone, even though Rollo and Maggie were with my parents, so far away. I had a glass of wine, and bathed, and settled to a book. At eleven that night, there was a hammering at my door, and I caught the smell of burning. I rushed to open it, and there was something alight on the doorstep, some newspaper or other. I went to stamp out the flames…

I threw the shoes away, in the end, as I could not erase my memory of the dog faeces they had filled the paper with.

CHAPTER 44
It had started again. Marck told me a few days later that they had found nothing in the way of fingerprints, and so nothing could be taken further. Matty was around the day after that, and he began work immediately, with visits from Elle and my god-daughter, to install a system of television cameras connected to a recording device, as well as some strong external lights that would respond to any motion near them.

Four days afterwards, I awoke in the very small hours to the sound of breaking glass, as somebody methodically shot every single fixture with some type of air weapon.

There were other wrapped packages of excrement burnt at my door, and once a dead rat was nailed to it, but after the shooting Marck and Roland spoke to the chiefs, and for a few nights there was a car parked near the house, the markings clear. I clung to the strength I had found, Marck’s smile and promise and the presence of his colleagues, and each day I rode my little scooter to the University and the far more open minds of my students.

Pascale told me that I was near to full certification, and it would involve at some point observers in my lessons, my tutorials. I had found my own plan of academic action, and each day I tried to make a new joke in the English for the class to laugh at, after they had worked out what was actually amusing. Or, sometimes, what was not in any way amusing to a sane person, and then we would have a deeper discussion about the English people and how deeply strange they were. I remember one boy asserting that they suffered from some sort of odd complex deriving from the fact that they had only rivalled, never surpassed France in influence and power, and I found his parochial outlook both worrying and amusing.

Another informed me that if one were to live in perpetual rain, eating the worst food in the world, then perhaps one’s sense of humour might develop in a manner skewed to normality, which I thought perhaps more deserving of consideration. For the first boy, I simply showed him a map of the world from a century before. Ah. That was his response.

I had three weeks of relative calm before the next unpleasant stirring, which was the copying, and displaying throughout the University, of a letter sent to a local newspaper.

‘My sirs, my ladies.

Is it appropriate that a teacher removed from one of our schools because of his unnatural and perverted behaviour should now be employed in the same profession at our excellent University despite his disgusting advances and importuning of our vulnerable and innocent children at that school? What message are we to send people who may wish to attend that august institution if we allow a pederast and molester of children to continue to have access to young people, to deprave, corrupt and perhaps even infect with SIDA? I NAME AND SHAME SERGE LAPLACE, NOW CALLING HIMSELF SOPHIE!

Yours amicably
Elodie Blanchard’

It was a Tuesday when I found the first copy, affixed to the notice board in the language centre. I tore it down, but there were more, in the cafeteria, in the laundry room, at the bar, among the announcements for sporting events, and as I ripped them down there seemed to be more. Elle was to hand, and in a day I had a visit at my stained and charred door, and it was Abdullah. There was no observation of the propriety as he entered, for he gathered me immediately into a close embrace that I am sure would have scandalised his parents.

“Speak to me, Sophie, I would know all”

I did speak, of rats and graffiti, of paper wrapping excrement and nocturnal shots, of Marck and the meeting with the direction at the school, of…of Benny and his defence and then abandonment of me. There was a knock at the door, and I started, badly, and Abdullah saw.

“Calm, my sweet. It is a friend”

He opened the door, and brought in Pascale, who waved away my greeting.

“Chut, Sophie, I know how to use a kitchen. Speak to this nice man while I prepare some coffee. You have milk?”

“Yes, in the refrigerator”

I continued my tale, and Abdullah made his notes. Eventually, as he finished his interrogation of myself and Pascale, he sat back and sighed.

“So you know this Blanchard?”

“Yes, from when we all lived in the flat, in the city. She has a food shop”

“And she knew of, well, Sophie?”

“She met me when I had first stepped across the boundary, and she was loud, and she said I was a travesty. She had always known I was a queer, she said, and then Maman, she told her to bugger herself up her own arsehole….and that we were away to our new house, and garden…”

Pascale laughed. “Ah, a woman after my own heart, or at least my taste in spiced language”

Abdullah’s voice was quieter. “She is a grandmother now, Sophie. A little girl, one Tiffanie, which is spelled very strangely”

“It was her daughter Forgeron impregnated?”

“Yes indeed. At a young age, but unfortunately not THAT young, otherwise we would have little to worry about from his part. No, there are---Pascale? You would tell this part?”

My friend put her hand onto my knee. “Sophie, there are once more letters, letters of the same kind. It would appear there is a group, and they do not wish the, I am sorry, pervert to be allowed or infect their adolescents. They demand your dismissal”

I began to tremble a little. “And the direction of the University, they say what?”

She laughed once more, happily and coarsely. “Oh, they are of a more modern and tolerant view, but they share the same tastes in words as your maman and myself. They have instituted a security review to discover who is behind this little rash of copied letters, and when they do his course of study, or employment, with the University will come to an abrupt termination”

She leant forward to speak in earnest to me. “You must realise, my sweet, that I am not the only one here that values you, that sees how wonderfully you work with your students. They know, as well, of the lost children you have recovered. They have a talent that increases daily, and they would nurture it and make it their own. You are not alone in this, my sweet, you will never be alone”

In the end I had to weep, for it made sense to do so with my friends there to dry my face rather than later, alone in the dark. They would not stop my work, that was the thanks I gave to the Good Saviour that night. Matty began work on hidden cameras a few days later.

There were more letters in the paper, many of them defending me but still several that pressed forward the campaign of distortion and deceit, and outright falsehood. I smiled wryly at some, for a number of the alleged activities I had ceased to be equipped for some time previously, but they still hurt. Pascale kept me informed when each new latter of rage and accusation arrived, but the direction stood firm.

One day I went to enter the WCs, and a young girl I had not seen before turned to look at me.

“Not here. The men’s pissers are over there”

By the time I thought to challenge her for her identity, she had gone. I never saw her again, and I do believe she came in from the city just for the chance of abusing me. Someone, somewhere, was orchestrating events around me.

They found my University e-mail address, which was hardly difficult, and my box of receipt started to fill with all sorts of different problems. There was abuse, there was pornography, and there were advertisements for products that promised to enlarge the recipient’s penis. I changed my address a little, and they stopped, but Marck could hold no promise of any investigation. This was not, apparently, a hate crime that involved someone that it was officially illegal to hate, as far as his chiefs were concerned. The assaults, the shootings at the house, they were real: the electronic warfare was merely words.

I realised, at that point, that I was relying on Marck as much as my family. Rollo was absorbed by Margot’s approach to motherhood, and I wondered how it was that Marck did so much for me. One night, as his car sat bright, shiny, pretty and bearing the word ‘Police’ outside the sunflower house, and he sat in my kitchen for some of the coffee, I had to ask.

“Why? I suppose, my sweet, it is two things. Rather, two people, yourself and your brother”

I started up at that, and he put his hand on my arm. “No, Sophie, it is not like that. You…it is difficult not to sound cruel, but…”

His eyes looked beyond the walls of the house. “Sophie, I must say this in one utterance, so please remain silent. No, I do not desire you, because while you were a boy you were attractive but you were never a boy and you were always a girl and I see you are now a grown woman and that does not bid a welcome to my desires”

He stopped, and one of his eyes turned to mine. “You see? You are not alone here, in this state of difference. I am someone who likes young men, not young girls. This is our seal, our bond. Yes, I know it is not the same. Whore, I watched Serge as a boy, and he had a promise of what I desired, and yet I did not desire what he had”

He laughed, the tension breaking at last. “Brothel of shit, if you had been a boy you would have broken my heart into tiny shards when you grew, but I saw that you were so wrong in your life that when Roland told me, I said to myself, I said Marck, your piece had better eyesight and judgement than your brain”

He took a sip of the coffee. “Now, that is a very unusual thing for any man, no? Normally it is exactly the inverse”

I looked at him, seeking signs of those things I had been called, but they were absent. “Marck, what is it between Rollo and you?”

The laughter this time was hearty. “You do not think? Oh, no, absolutely not, my sweet! He is definitely not of my sort, and I watch him with that tall blonde friend of yours and I could weep, they are so utterly fitted soul to soul. What it is…what it was, it was some time ago, and I had a little friend…”

A little male friend, that was the French he spoke. ‘Un petit ami’

“We were not suited, and…look, girl, let me leave this as a simple statement. I was in a position where my life could have ended up as a real brothel of shit, and your brother, he found a way to make it better, make it work, so that nobody felt the need any more, the need to hurt, no? So your brother, this Roland, he is owed a debt, and I am an honourable cocksucker, so I repay”

Another sip. “Besides which, I am fond of you. The courage you have shown…shit, that day on the bridge, I knew exactly what you intended, but I did not know quite why. Now…today you fit your skin, and you make sense as a person”

That was indeed our bond, and I learned a lesson that evening. The homosexual man is shown so often as something like a distorted woman, but with a piece. They, the media, the prejudices of most people, show him as having a large sign over his head, and yet here was Marck, no different to any other man except in liking athletic young men rather than the hostesses of Carpiquet. That brought other memories forward, of his jokes and suggestions to Rollo about those girls, and I understood at once how he had to steer his life and his conversation like one of those inflated rafts in a rocky stream. What I had undergone could turn to bite him as surely as the sun arose each morning. When he left, I embraced him. He was yet another friend, one more I had missed in those days of misery.

The next evening he was not there, and I woke to find that eggs had been thrown at all the windows. Matty’s cameras had caught a few shapes, but they all had cagoules over their heads, and their action had been too swift to leave any useful detail. Another dead rat was in the box of letters. I took more photographs, and once more rode my little scooter to my young people.

I woke that night to the sound of alarms and sirens from police, fire vehicles, ambulances, all sorts of things, and there was a glow from the North and the East. I stumbled down my stairs, still in a state of drowsiness, and saw that the glow was orange, and came from somewhere towards Le Havre. I turned my television on, and found the chain that carried the news 24 hours, and it was shocking. The glow was from the terminal at the port, where the oils were stored. There was a fire, explosions, and the sounds I had heard were the services of urgency rushing to secure the area, fight the fire, aid the wounded. I watched the story for about an hour, praying to the Saviour that Marck and his friends would be safe, and I was just making a coffee when the first stone came through the window of the living room.

CHAPTER 45
I heard the shattering of the glass first in the living room, and only a second later in the kitchen, and understood there were several assailants. This was not the time for courage and confrontation, no longer a matter of rude words at the WC or letters in a newspaper. It was an attack. I thought for a few moments, as more stones came and the shouting started. Whoreson. Cocksucker. Pervert. There were the voices of several men, but there were women, too, and I thought I heard the voice of a child. I had to run, but they were clearly all around, so I seized my wireless telephone and a kitchen knife and ran up my stairs as they began to strike at the door.

“Where are you, Laplace, you piece of cunt?”

That had to be Forgeron, and he started to laugh at that insult, and another voice shouted “Yes, he has got a piece of a cunt now, not so?”

I made it to the small store room beside the bathroom, squeezing in past the boxes and cleaning materials, and rearranged it as well as I could. There was an odd calm on me as I fortified my retreat as much as was possible, and I entered the emergency number to my telephone.

“Police, please hurry! They are breaking down my door!”

I gave address, and name, and I stayed with the operator for as long as she could wait, but…

“I am sorry, Sophie, but everyone is at the fire. I am calling everywhere and everyone, but I do not know when they can arrive”

“I will keep this line connected, then, and ring my brother”

As I have written that, it sounds as if everything was taking place in a calm and controlled fashion, but it was not so. I flinched at the sound of each blow on my door, and as the cries and abuse mounted, my calmness fled, drained away through the soles of my feet. With the operator still to my left ear, I entered Maggie’s number on my mobile telephone.

“Sophie…?”

“They are breaking down the door, Maggie! There are no police, no neighbours! They will be in soon! You must find help!”

“Rollo is waking, sister, Rollo will be there. Hold fast! How many are there?”

“I do not know, but they were at all sides of the house. He cannot do this alone”

“Stay with me, Sophie”

She called away from the phone, obviously to my brother. “There is a gang, my love, they are breaking down her door”

I heard his voice, thinly. “Whore of a…Maggie, ring the office, beg them, tell them to fuck the tourists, get there, no?”

“She says there are many of them”

“Then it will be baton and arm of fucking service, my darling. I come, tell her that”

“Who are you fucking talking to you little cocksucking son of a bitch-whore?”

The voice was right outside the door. It had to be Forgeron…and that other voice, oh Dear Saviour.

“You found him, Papa?”

“Yes, my little sweet one. Now we shall show him what filthy arsebandits deserve”

There were fainter voices, and Forgeron laughed again, and I realised he was very, very drunk.

“Alain, you have right! He does have a cunt now, and I will try that out, but he always enjoyed it in the arse, so why waste a hole?”

That other voice. “He’s got three holes now, no? One for each of us!”

I am ashamed to say that I was so afraid at that point that I lost control of my bladder, and Forgeron must have been able to smell it. He began to scratch at the door, as Tiffanie giggled, and I do not know how many others laughed.

“Smell that? He has wet his knickers! Laplace, open the door, we just want some fun, you’ll like it….”

He scratched a few more times, and then there was an impact on the door.

“OPEN, YOU PIECE OF A CUNT!”

I sat against the back wall, bracing my feet against the wooden box I had placed against the door to hold it shut. There was nothing but the strength of my thighs to protect me further, that and the knife I held. The operator was still with me.

“Can you hear what they are doing?”

“Courage, my child, they come. I am recording the events”

I realised Maggie was shouting from the other phone as my mind was taken by the fear.

“Maggie?”

“They come, Sophie, Rollo is on his way, his colleagues also. Courage, my sweet, we love you!”

She was sobbing, and in one small moment of clarity I realised that I was hearing tears in the voice of the operator. The door quivered again, and then there was shouting, much foul language, and suddenly one very loud bang. Sirens…

Silence, just for a second, then the screams of a child, and a metronomic sound, thump, thump, thump. Marck’s voice.

“Rollo, stop now!”

“I will kill him, Marck, it will be a service”

“No, Roland, stop now. Sophie…we are here, they are fled. You may emerge”

These are the events that Marck and Roland recounted to me later, after I had opened the door to my refuge, after I had washed away the urine from my private region and changed my clothing, after Marck had prepared a pot of coffee somehow in the wreckage of my kitchen.

Roland had left his house in the first clothes he could pull on, and driven illegally fast to the sunflower house, as Maggie sobbed by the telephone. She had called his office to beg for help as the operator had put out an appeal for any officer to fly to my address. Marck, of course, had responded, leaving his duties controlling traffic after a short but severe argument with his superior. He had arrived only a few minutes after my brother, and ten minutes later two cars filled with PAF had followed.

Roland had found some twenty or so people standing laughing outside the house, and five or six inside, and he had not paused. He had simply shouted to them to “Fuck off! Now!” and when they laughed, he had fired one round from his service arm, into the air, and that had served to encourage their departure.

Two men had met him at the front door, and his baton had met them, just as Marck had arrived. Rollo had gone straight ahead, past the two men, and as they rose to attack him from behind, Marck had struck them again and again until they had, in his words, thought of a better thing to do.

“Sophie, it was dreadful. The mess, the damage…and that piece of a cunt brought his child along to watch?”

She had been beside her father, whom Rollo stood astride as Marck reached the head of the staircase, and…

“Rollo, you had no life in your eyes, my friend. I had to stop you, you know this to be true, no?”

Astride Forgeron, swinging. Forehand, backhand, forehand, teeth and blood flown everywhere. The ambulance arrived as they finished their tale, and three men left us, one to the hospital, two to the police station, and then, as the other PAF men crowded around, my brother shuddered, as if awaking, and then began to weep. All was so confused, and then I had to wonder, how it was that it was I who held and comforted my rescuer. Marck sat with us, silent, holding a hand of each of us, until my sweet brother was the man he showed the world again.

“Rollo, take her to your house. I will finish my duty here, and then I shall sleep, if that is acceptable. We shall keep the house safe, and then, well, we have some work to do. I will make my calls. Take her home, my brother. But call Maggie now, no?”

I could give more description of how the night continued, of my sister’s tears, of the interview by the other policemen to whom I told the story, of how Forgeron survived, of the arraignment for the attack and his conviction, with two friends, of attempted rape, for the operator had caught many of their words, but no. To tell it once is agony, and to relive it torture. I stayed with Maggie, her belly swollen with the life to come, and I felt that I had reached an ending of sorts, and one day, perhaps two weeks after the assault, I returned to the sunflower house, the place of my rebirth, its windows still covered with boards, and I stood in the kitchen, in the darkness.

It was over. I had dreamt, and struggled, and my best work, even with the help of my wonderful family, my friends, it was insufficient. Forgeron and his friends were essentially right in what they said. I was a fraud.

I opened the drawer where I kept my knives.

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.

CHAPTER 47
The old house was full of laughter and sound now, but I could not share fully in it. Christmas lay ahead, and it would be the first for the child that Rollo was already calling ‘The Conqueror’ in a clear reference to my status as ‘Little Emperor’. I could not face the prospect of the feast, as I had too many dear memories of other ones, better ones.

Papa and Maman were flying yet again, to see their grandson and pass the feast with us, and I was so tempted to flee to the sunflower house and just lock the door until all had left again. It was the middle of December, and I had not heated the house for what seemed like months, but I did not care. So many of my friends wanted me to come out to see them, or wished to take me somewhere for a brightening of my day, but I could not. It was Rollo who made me the threat.

“Sophie, I do not do this lightly. I have spoken to my blonde, and she understands, as do our parents. I have a proposal for you”

What now? “Speak, my brother”

“You remember that English, Welsh woman I spoke of? The one like you?”

“Yes. You saw her twice, no?”

“Yes. That second time, she had a friend, also like you. We have been exchanging the e-mails. They…look, it is fine for you to speak to doctors, to head doctors as well, for they can help, they can advise, but is it not fundamentally true that they can never KNOW?”

I could sense that he was not asking me for consent to something, but that he had already made and confirmed his plans. He rushed on.

“They are to have an event, a musical meeting, with worship, at Christmas. It would allow you to meet others like you, talk, share…but it will mean I am not here for my son’s first Christmas. That is, that is difficult, but, whore, I want his aunt here for the rest of his Christmas feasts and not in a box under the soil. Guillaume, Maman, they will care for my precious people, but you, my precious sister, I would heal, if it be possible”

“I have no passport”

“You have your CNI, and I have already reserved the berths on the ferry to Portsmouth. There is to be no argument”

I turned to walk away, wondering how I might break his will, and he called out “Oh yes, we will be in a tent”

My brother was insane. I went to see my sister, who was feeding the Conqueror, his little hands kneading her breast, and I felt my failure sharply. She looked up, and caught my expression.

“He has told you, then?”

“Yes”

“Sophie, we talked so much of this, and he is insistent. He is also right, which is not always true of my beautiful man. This time, just one Christmas, and the rest…I want my sister to return to me. The last time we did not see you, but now, now we watch as you fade, and it is torment to us”

I spoke to our parents when they arrived, and it was evident that Roland and Maggie had prepared them in advance, and Pascale was the same, and Marck, and even my grandmother when I called her telephone in Perpignan.

“Go, my sweet. The food will be of shit, and the wine bad, and the weather worse, but you must go to this thing. Talk these women, discover how they make life work. You must do this thing”

And so it was. We purchased a tent from the leisure lines of the big shop at Bayeux, along with some sort of mattress each, and a bag to sleep in, and one morning Rollo and I filled his car with suitcases and tent, bags and extra duvets for the cold night, and we drove the short distance to the port for our ferry. We had the maps of the roads, and my brother had selected a number of compact discs of his favourite music which I had quietly removed and replaced with some of my own, and we set out across the vastness of the bay of the Seine.

In reality, as the plan and the journey unfolded, I was a little excited. This would be my chance to use the thing I had taught so many, and I had a frisson when I wondered if I actually spoke the English as well as I was told and believed. We did not need to get as far as the other country, though, to find bad food. Perhaps I have been spoiled by my Maman, the earner of a precious and deserved Michelin star, but, really, the food was dire, the coffee worse. The ship felt like an enlarged autoroute rest area. Roland read, and I simply found a comfortable chair that had not been reserved and slept.

Land. At first, a hilly island which I searched in vain for the port of landing, and then a tall, thin tower, with curving wings, and fortresses standing in the channel, low walls, a narrow entrance, and everywhere sails and shipping. There were grey hulls of the little British navy in the distance, and the spars and masts of two very old ships, but we were sent down to our car before we could see much more. Everything had looked so cramped.

The gates opened, and we followed others off. The control of passports was simple, and as I muttered to Roland “Hold the left, brother!” we set out on a fast road with blue signs, and turned onto another, and another, which changed to green signs and after some hills became narrower. We stopped to use the WCs at some place called Hooklip or a word like that, and I tried an English coffee. The ship, I thought, had been bad! I left it in the cup, with a shudder.

“How far now, Rollo?”

“We must pass this town called Guildford, and then we change to this blue road to here, then this blue road to an airport, and there is a church just about…here”

He indicated a small town on the map.

“Brother, why not just fly?”

“Because, my sweet sister, you wish no doubt to be warm tonight, as well as have something pleasant to wear, and that would not have been possible from two suitcases alone, not so? Now, we must go on. I will have a beer soon”

“And its brothers, no doubt?”

He turned to me as we walked out, and gave me the kiss. “My sweet, that was laughter, and you have lacked that too long. I wish more of it”

Hours on the blue and green roads, a cathedral of brick, more cars in one place than I had ever seen, and rain. A great deal of it, and when it first started Rollo had reached for his first disc, of ‘Ocean’, and found I had replaced it with ‘Tri Yann’

“I could cease to adore you, Sophie Laplace!”

“Just turn it louder, Rollo, some of the music can be loud enough”

The crest of a hill, and a long descent to a complicated (‘hold the left, Rollo’) joining of blue roads, and we were on our last before the airport exit. I looked across at him, and despite the backwards driving he was relaxed, and I was struck forcibly by the fact that I was in the same state. The further we went, the lighter my mood. Perhaps he had been correct in his stratagem. Another descent, this time with no answering rise ahead, and I could see aircraft approaching one by one from what I worked out to be the East. I knew this to be a large airport, but it was so much busier than our own little place I was astonished. We left at a round point, drove across another, and ‘not this, not this, THIS one’ at a third, another road to join as far as a last round point, and the church we sought was there beside the road. Rollo drove straight past it and kept going what seemed like five kilometres before yet another round point, which he circled completely around before starting to drive back the way we had already come.

“Sophie, you must watch for the sign of the six beauties”

“Six beauties? OH! You silly man, it is six bells, I saw the sign as we passed. After these control lights…there, on our right”

A narrow street, a large car park, and a great sweep of grass already bearing some tents.

“It seems we are arrived, Rollo. Let us station the car, find an emplacement for our tent, and then you can erect it”

He made no answer, simply kissing my hand’s palm. As I got out of our vehicle, he murmured “Laughter, Sophie. This is the true you”

He was hardly out himself before a tall woman approached, one with long russet hair. She threw her arms wide to embrace my brother. I greeted her in the English, but she changed words immediately into the French, and it was not a bad command that she had.

“Hello, I am Stephanie, Steph, Woodruff. You must be Sophie, not so?”

She gave me the kisses after I made a yes with my head.

“Sophie, I hope I do not intrude, but your brother has told me of your difficulties. I know also that he has told you that we, you and I, are in a sense sisters. Come, I show you something”

Roland raised an eyebrow. “And this tent?”

Steph smiled at him, which looked a little odd, and said “Erections are men’s work”

Arm in arm, the little raindrops sparkling in her hair still as the skies cleared away the clouds, she took me across the graveyard to an outside place, where a gravestone stood, flowers before it. I had seen its like in many cemeteries near Caen, the resting places of young men from England fallen in the war. This one bore a woman’s name.

“Sophie, this is what we have known here. This girl, she was like us, and she suffered like you, and they killed her. We remember her here each Summer, and the Christmas, it is a feast for her spirit as well. This is what I have spoken to Roland about. You are not to let those men win, yes?”

“And what happened to the men who attacked this girl, this Melanie?”

That disturbing smile one more time. “We found them, and we locked them up, and they will not come out until their own lives have been wasted. Come; we must check your tent. There is to be a service in the church, of the Protestants. Does that offend you?”

“Not at all. I am not in Rome, so I need not do as the Romans, no?”

The tent was up, Steph took her leave of us, and indeed we went to the church. I had to whisper a translation to Rollo as the homily was delivered by a man who seemed at one point to have been a Father. This was an odd mixture, and part way through his words I had to stop speaking for Rollo and simply listen. Sometimes I lost a word, but the message, it was surely written for me, and to me, and about me, and about the bastards who had tormented me, and about Maggie, and Elle….and I had to weep in my brother’s arms, for this was truth, reality.

We had a choir, and they sang so wonderfully, with power and grace, that when the priest, vicar, whatever his name offered the bread and the wine, the Body and the Blood, I felt that it was proper to take it, to share that Holy Communion, for these people were truly of Christ.

There was one last song, and I remembered the tune from the games of rugby that Rollo had watched on the television, but I cannot do justice to it properly in words. There were big men there, singing in basso, and women with clear soprano voices that flew above, and one, just one tenor that was pure beauty in my ears. The tune was a slow march, but each chorus rose to Heaven, and there were harmonies to make me weep once more. I was stunned. These people, they could not be in sin with such passion.

We left the church with the other people, and followed them to another building where there was food, small and large cakes, some sort of stewed meat, and tea and what was called coffee. There was a very red boy on a low stage who had what looked like some sort of cornemuse, and sounded pleasant. Rollo found Steph with his eyes , and we approached. As he gave her a tale of our journey, omitting his mistake about the beauties, I was shaken in the hand by a very big bearded man with dark hair turning to grey.

“Tony Hall, a friend of Steph’s”

“Sophie Laplace, and my brother Roland”

His eyes searched my form, and I made a yes with my head.

“I am like Stephanie there, you know, so I know I look…you understand, eh?”

There was another woman behind Tony, shorter, with very dark hair above skin which was remarkably pale.

“Annie Johnson, Sophie, and I too am like Steph, and there are three others here at least, so you are welcome. Do you like music?”

There was laughter from the big man, and he made remarks, warnings, of Annie and Steph living upon the music as if it were food, and they made jokes about beer, and more and more people, men and women, joined them, all seeming to be completely calm and accepting about the two transsexual people.

“They know about you?” I said, indicating the crowd around us. Annie laughed.

“Two of us held our weddings here, and we assist with children who have problems, or need to find who they are. They know. I was smeared on paper”

I did not understand.

“In the newspapers, Sophie. There was a criminal trial, and I was imitating a man at the start and being myself at the end”

“And there is no hatred?”

Roland, though he could not understand our conversation, had seen my shoulder tighten, and he embraced me with one arm, and spoke to Stephanie. “Sophie was attacked in a very bad manner just a little while ago, as I told you. You may tell them, if my sister agrees”

I made yes with my head, and Steph gave a short account of my recent imitation of a life. Tony amazed me, his face turning white and muscles tightening at his jaw. I realised his hands were now fists, just as he called out to someone called Sar.

A woman his age, a blonde, red mixture, she came across, and they whispered before she took my hand.

“Hello, I am Sarah, Tony’s wife. And yes, me too. Annie, Steph, me, all sisters, in a way”

Tony explained to his wife, and suggested we sit and talk. He then grinned, and said something about international languages, and “Roland! Beer!”

Rollo knew enough English for that one, and disappeared outside with what seemed to be a large group of men, some of them very large. The next moments were confusing, and some of them spoke strangely, so it may be that I have not written it down accurately.

I seemed surrounded by women. One was very direct. “Hello, I am Janet, and I am another like you, though we do not tell people, and so is Alice, the lady over there with the shoes with the heels and the grey hair. This is Ginny, who is harmless but frightening, and this is Chantelle…who is…”

She looked at the young girl entirely in rose who was holding the hand of a tall woman with hair dyed the colour of a traffic stop signal.

“Shan, Ginny, how do we describe Shan?”

The teenaged girl drew herself erect, pressing hard on the other woman’s hand. Her English had a strong accent, but I could understand it.

“My mums have told me what they did to you, Sophie, so here is what I am. I am a rape survivor, and these are the people what saved my life. Simples”

And that was the start of it all. Each of the women, they talked to me of tragedy, of pain, and each of them drove it away with the tales of healing and love, of their family and the strength of their friends, and once more, I knew I had this in my life, but my weakness…

“Fucking girliness, yeah, blaming yourself cause the patriarchy’s a bunch of cunts and you can’t fight twenty of the arseholes? You are walking, breathing, and living as a woman, and don’t you see how much fucking strength that shows you got?”

I think I have most of what Ginny said correct, but she was as a force of nature, filled with vigour, and I wondered if she too was like me. She observed my glances. “No, Sophie, me a bleeder, once a month, and so are both my girlies. But that don’t mean you ain’t a woman, right?”

More and more women seemed to have joined us, and there was a loud cry of “Right!”

Janet leant forward. “We have an offer for you, Sophie, a way to perhaps break free, or at least to make your horizons wider. We are, with your agreement, going to make enquiries about finding you a position as a teaching aide, instructing English children in French. Would you be agreeable to that?”

The answer was in my mouth before the thoughts reached my mind. How could I reply otherwise?

Steph held a hand aloft. “Geoff and Eric have been grilling her brother, so I think it was time we let them buy us alcohol. We shall adjourn to the licensed premises while it remains open”

I walked arms linked to two of my sisters across the car parking space to the pub. Roland was there, a very big glass before him, and though I had always known he loved me, just then the knowledge filled me to my corners. I touched his cheek, and turned to Steph.

“You do all of this just because my brother is once polite to you?”

Steph sat up straight. “He was not polite, he was civilised, humane, everything Pat here said in his sermon. He treated me with dignity, me, a complete stranger. He showed me that it was not just my beloved here, and his family, people who knew me. It could be anybody. Sophie, we have long memories here, and you have to understand that there is a reason for it all buried in the churchyard”

I remembered the grave, that Melanie. As I shuddered, they were still talking, about whom they knew in the schools, who could offer the greatest help. I realised that someone was talking to me. It was the big man, Tony.

“What do you think?”

“Would people here not…you know, hate me the same?”

Annie sat more erect. “Let’s just say that round here we sort of have an interest in that sort of thing and a very good support group. Resistance is futile, little girl. Do you wish to explain it all to your brother?”

Roland seemed to be feeling a little excluded from the conversation, as he spoke so little of the English, and so I described what they had offered. As we spoke, there were jokes around us, mostly about beer, and music, and it was that which struck my imagination. These people were happy. This was no imposition; it was simply how they lived their lives. As they gathered their outer clothing to return to the other building, and I went to rise, I was faced by a true giant of a man. He must have been two metres tall, as wide as a house but not with fat, and he was blond, hair, moustache, like the stereotype of a god from Asgard. He held a hand towards mine, and as he brought me to my feet he said, in accented French, “Would you dance with me?”

He was older by far than me, but he was truly handsome, and his height, and his size…but there was a ring on that finger. My dreams would wait. He took me to that other building, where there were more musicians, and there was a waltz, and he could dance beautifully, and…oh.

CHAPTER48
I stood in the sunflower house, watching the dust dancing in rays of light that shone through the new windows. In just a short time, the damage done that night was vanishing into the house’s history. My neighbours, perhaps shamed by the way they had hidden from the mob, had helped in small ways, and the money that the Blanchards and others had been directed to pay me as compensation had done the rest. Maggie was sitting in my kitchen, her son at her breast, and Matty and Elle were to join us with their small package later that day for a meal in the Spring sun in my garden.

How easy that was to say, now, after all had been brought into the light, the demons exorcised. I thought back a few months, to that Christmas morning…

We had slept soundly, in our new bags under our mountain of feathers, and as I emerged for the use of the WC I was surprised to find one of my old shoes in the vestibule of the tent, with a small package in it. I left it be, just then, for my needs were insistent, and walked through a cold morning of coughs and slowly moving figures. There were still snores from some tents, but the doors to the dance building were open, and one of the Welsh people, I think the one engaged to the priest, was heating water. The WC was very cold, so I hurried back to the tent to warm myself, stopping only to gather two cups of what Merry, for that was her name, said were ‘coffee’.

Rollo was awake, or woken, as I slipped back into my bed with my little package, and I watched his face as I opened it. There was a card, and it read “New life for my sweet sister”. The contents were simple, and so, so right: a packet of the seeds of sunflowers. The meaning needed no explanation, so he received a kiss, and a thank you, and a hurried apology for not having thought.

“My sweet, to see you last night, that was my Christmas gift! Now, Stephanie tells me that today will be an English Christmas meal, with visitors of unfortunate children. There will be some music played for them, and then, she tells me, there will be more…energetic and adult music for the evening. We shall eat our meal, and take the car to the hill to the North, that we might see a little of the landscape. Then return for the evening. Does that sound like a plan that would work for us?”

It did indeed, but he had one duty, and so I handed him his little telephone and said that as a new father he had something important to wish somebody even more important.

That morning saw us consume a ‘full English breakfast’, which was amusing, because that Merry insisted on explaining to me how it would actually be seen as a Welsh breakfast, except there was no…I did not know the words, and she told me an odd tale of algae from the beach, made into bread somehow, and I do not know if she was making jests or if this is something that part of England really does.

I then spent some time looking at the church, because my brother had been enlisted to carry tables and chairs for the meal. There were so many young people about, a dog, laughter everywhere, and I realised that something had adjusted itself deep in my soul. As Serge, I had always been frightened. For the last two or three years, I had oscillated as a pendulum, between fear, nervousness, some small moments of joy, but always, with a crowd, a hint of dread, a feeling in the nape that I was expecting the blow. This place, this crowd of people, this was unlike that. There were very big men, often with scars to frighten children, but they smiled. There were two priests, who spoke of love and the humanity. There were people who were obviously with Sappho, and they were accompanied by a child and nobody seemed to find it wrong, or unusual, or even worthy of comment. The young people found each other, but were not dismissed by the older ones.

At the end of the morning, I was kidnapped. Stephanie, Annie and Sarah, with another woman called Jan, they collected me and took me to a house, which was appreciated: the WC had heating! It was Annie’s home, and as we sat in the kitchen, she smiled and opened a cupboard to reveal a packet of real coffee.

“Some of us like a decent cup, aye? You won’t have liked what Merry makes; she thinks too much caffeine is sinful”

Sarah laughed. “Not the same with tea, though! What do you think, Jan?”

That woman, the sister-in-law to Stephanie, put fingers to my chin and turned my head to left and right, muttering small words to herself.

“I’ll need to check her colouring…”

I have never been a woman of paint and powder, certainly not as the things Françoise had wrought with Maggie that first evening, but Jan clearly had skills, as well as what seemed a portmanteau-sized box of the necessary equipment. The morning was spent applying, removing, drinking the coffee, laughing, applying again, and finally Jan pronounced herself satisfied with her work. Only then did I see the result in a mirror in Annie’s bathroom.

They had moved my hair, and she had painted something near my eyes, and, well, once more…oh. My smile was their answer, and with a last sip of the coffee we made our way back to the church for the meal. I felt a little of the nerves, for this was new to me, and though I liked how I looked I suspected that others may feel that I was ridiculous in the paint. We entered the hall, and my giant man of the dance let forth a very loud whistle, and my resolution failed right then as I ran for the WC. Stupid, stupid fraud…

Sarah was behind me, and seized my hands before I could grasp the paper to wipe my face clean.

“No, Sophie, that does not happen here. Safe, aye? Friends, all friends. That was just Steve being another friend. Look, we know what you went through, and…I had some things of the same kind. People know, they understand. Safe, aye?”

Jan was behind her. She made the big sigh, but with a smile. “How much damage? Ah, ten seconds will see it right. Come on, girl”

I walked back out, a little later, my head down to hide her work, but Sarah was not accepting of it, throwing me an apron.

“Come on, woman! Time for us to serve the food!”

There were all sorts of injured and unfortunate children in the hall, with attendants, and the food had been prepared by a number of muddle-aged women who handed us plates and platters which we distributed amongst the diners before taking our own. There was laughter, and gluttony, and paper crowns, and one child needed cleaning, but through it all I was entranced, for Annie and Steph played gentle music on flute and violin that created an ambience where I finally found my heart able to accept what my head had heard and understood: I was safe.

Roland apologised through me, but he wished to see at least some of the country, and with a map drawn by Annie we drove through a small town with a clock and a statue of a ballerina, and up a steep hill where we found a parking, and then a little foot bridge. The woods were bare with the winter, just a few small patches of old snow. As we rose, I realised we could see the towers of London to one side, and then there was an old fortress facing South over the town with the ballerina.

“Rollo, it says here that this was to defend against the French!”

He gathered me to him, gave me the kisses. “My sweet, clearly it has not succeeded, no?”

The view was pleasant, the aeroplanes visible as they landed at and left the airport we had passed, and there were walkers and dogs and cyclists, and as we returned to the car even a place to buy coffee, which I declined. As the shadows of Winter grew longer, we descended once more the hill and returned to the hall, where the food had been replenished with piles of cakes and meat in crust, pieces of cooked chicken and sandwiches made in English bread. I pointed the last out to Rollo, and smiled.

“My first recipe from Maman, remember?”

We ate, and Roland had beer, and the musical group played, and there were so many of them. It was traditional music, much of it Irish or similar, and they were very, very good. Annie and Steph in particular amazed me with their playing, which got wilder and wilder as the evening continued, with Steph’s unbound hair flying around her as Annie contrived to make some very effective but odd notes from her flute. Many people were dancing, mostly women, and I watched the big man, that Tony, and he was smiling so gently I wondered if my heart would break, because his eyes went nowhere but to his wife.

Suddenly there were two women before me, one red, one pink.

“Coo-ee froggy! You are dancing!”

“I do not–“ was all I could utter before the insane one, the one with the red hair like a traffic signal, grasped my hand.

“Not asking, telling!”

And so I danced, but it was not as I had with the Norseman, and it was also insane, and delightful, and the music…it was traditional, and it was rock, and I turned at one point to find Rollo dancing near me.

“Jethro Tull! They do Jethro Tull!”

There were sounds I could not believe coming from the stage, and as I looked, Annie, who was in heels of some height, did something outrageous with her flute, and slowly raised one leg until her foot was by her knee, and then just as slowly started to fall sideways, at which point her husband Eric simply stepped forward and calmly took her weight as she brought her foot back down to the floor, all the while playing at his guitar.

Insane, all of them.

The morning felt as if it were a funeral. The two nights with these people, the energy and love, it was beyond price. We put all of our things into their bags, the bags into the car, and of course we made the promises, and for once these were not the usual empty assurances one gives to a new friend met on a holiday, that one will keep in touch, exchange messages. These assurances were from the soul.

A long drive. A ferry crossing through which I slept almost the entirety of the voyage. Home to Maggie, and a small child, and my parents, who looked at me intently until I simply smiled and embraced them. And St Sylvestre, the new year arriving, and an older one taking with it a host of demons as it was left behind.

Those were my memories that Spring day as I began to prepare for the meal, the packet of seeds from Rollo in a corner where I could regard them while awaiting the proper time to set them in the soil for the Summer’s growing. There was a ring of the door bell. Matty, Elle and my god daughter.

And a tall blond. Tanned and slimmer than he had been, but still big, still strong, still…my eyes filled, and I ran upstairs, Elle handing her daughter to Matty as she followed.

“Sophie, no! You must give him a chance, he needs to explain!”

“Elle, how can I face him?”

“Listen, and decide, no? You know he ran away from you–no, that is how he describes it. He did the silly thing, he did the thing from the films, and he spent years in places he does not wish to remember”

She knelt before me, taking my hands as I sat on my bed, my tears beyond counting.

“Sophie, this is the key, the thing you must hear. As soon as he was enlisted, as soon as he was in the training, he thought to himself, Benny, you were a fool, and because he remains a fool he did not speak to us, not to my Matty, and the years, they go by, and then his term is up…and he is still a fool, for now he fears to come back, and…”

I looked at my friend. “And he enlists again?”

She made a yes with her head. “Will you at least speak with him?”

I could not answer. I had no answer I could safely give, not for a few moments, and then, then I remembered. A great blond god, waltzing with me. A giant with a beard, so clearly in love with his wife despite how her life had started. A flute player, of similar origin, whose husband knew just when to step forward, without words. There could only be one answer.

“Elle, I will await him here. Please say to him…please say, there was no Serge, never a Serge, this is who I am, who I have always been, and I will have my life”

I rose from the bed and stood by the window, looking out at the new green leaves that were emerging with joy from the stark branches of the Winter. There was a cough behind me, and I turned, and it was my Benny.

“Sophie, I…I was foolish, twice I was foolish, and…”

“Elle explained it to me, Benny. I would know, though, I must know. Why are you here? That is not meant as dismissal, but I must have an answer. There has been too much pain”

He stepped forward. Was that a suspicion of a tear? “Sophie, I made a wrongness between us. I would put that right. I…”

I thought of the English, their passion, and there was only one thing I could think of doing, and so I stepped forward, went to my Benny, and I kissed him on the mouth. He started away, but I had my hand behind his head, and then he stepped as close to me as he could get, and he kissed me in turn, and…oh, this time my breasts were full, and real, and Benny, he was also full, and real.

The meal was delayed.