We were the first ones on the boat when it pulled up. Nell and the man headed for the prow, taking the seats where the spray from the lake would touch their faces. I took a seat inside with my bags. More people began filling up the boat behind me. We were all heading across the water towards another garden. The one with the reflecting pools and the stone mansion with the blue shutters that was always mobbed with people and yet looked always also, so all by itself.

Someone made their way past me. A woman in a green dress, a dress that was impossibly just exactly like the dress I had so recently seen wrapped around Aurelie. Wrapped around Aurelie when she was wrapped in M’s arms. I shut my eyes blink, and cut her out, but she was still there when I opened them again. I pinched my arms too but she didn’t go away. Another women in a green dress passed me, her hem just skirting my knees as she made her way towards the prow. A woman in a green dress sat down next to me. I angled my knees slightly away from her. A woman in a green dress sat down on my other side. The boat was filling up with women in green dresses.

I grabbed up my shopping bags and clutched them on my lap like children. There was the scent of almonds in the air. I smelled it when the women moved, as if their dresses were lined with almonds, or they all had almonds tucked behind their ears, or folded up behind their knees. The captain blew the whistle and the boat pushed off into the lake. The women in the green dresses ignored me but when I breathed in, they leaned towards me and when I breathed out they leaned away. I couldn’t see Nell behind all the fluttering green silk, behind all the crossed ankles and needle black heels. I couldn’t see her. I wasn’t even sure anymore whether she was really there. I can be so much fun at parties, I wanted to shout to the women, but I held on to my shopping bags and shut my eyes and pretended I had a headache, as if the sun were too bright then, to me, where I was sitting.

One of the women, the woman to my right, who wore a green dress that ended just above her ankles, reached down into one of my shopping bags and touched the top of one of my tissue-wrapped parcels with her green painted fingernails. She didn’t look at me. She never looked at me once.

When the boat docked I leapt up and began pushing past the women, past all their slippery silk-covered knees. I held my bags close to me so they wouldn’t tangle in all the long hair that poured in wavy locks down from the tops of their heads. I bent this way and that to avoid all the long fingers and manicured nails. I almost couldn’t breathe for the smell of almonds. They watched me. They smiled pretty smiles. They exhaled their pretty almond breath. Perhaps I was faster than they were. Perhaps I was fast enough. The captain held out a hand to help me off the boat but I didn’t have one to give. I was all tangled up in my bags. Instead, I heaved myself back on solid ground and ran for home.