Cover

Other Books by this Author

ALSO BY FERNANDA EBERSTADT

Little Money Street
The Furies
When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth
Isaac and His Devils
Low Tide

Title Page

Dedication

For Maud and Theo

Book One

Chapter 1

You try calling someone “Daddy” whom you’ve never met in your life.

Rat has this pad of pink bubble gum–scented stationery with mice on it that’s all the rage at her school. Kids will trade a mammoth marble or a jawbreaker just for one page. Rat’s got a whole damn pad of it she’s just bought with the money her English father’s sent her for her birthday. And now she’s already wrecked three pages trying to write this damn letter thanking him for the twenty francs he’s sent her. First she’s ever heard from her father. More money than she’s ever had in her life. Chr papa, mrsi … cher Papa, mersi. cher ppa …

You can see Rat’s difficulty in the monkish elaborateness with which she is transmogrifying her capital letters, turning the C into a snake with a hissing tongue, the P into an archer with a bow, the whole set-piece of greeting and gratitude grinding to a halt, firstly, because Rat doesn’t know how to write a letter, and secondly, because never having met her father or heard from him before, she hasn’t a clue what sort of child he would like her to be.

“Can I see the card again?” Rat asks, hoping for guidance. A picture of a clown sitting on a cake, and on the inside, in English, “To Celia, Happy Birthday, love Daddy” in an anonymously cursive script.

“Where’s the envelope? Can I keep the stamp?”

“It came with something else, some bank business. I threw it away,” says Vanessa.

“I didn’t even know he knew when my birthday was,” Rat says, wondering.

“Get back to your letter, girl.”

Rat groans. Looks up again, after a moment. “Are you sure it’s okay to write him in French?” She knows the answer already.

“Sure, sweetheart, your daddy speaks good French. He went to boarding school in Switzerland.”

Rat considers other options, diversionary tactics. “Maybe I should send him a photo, so he knows what I look like.” There’s a snapshot of herself Rat likes that’s tacked up on the living room wall. She’s on the boardwalk at Canet Plage, in her Rollerblades, wearing a denim skirt which their neighbor Cristel helped her make from an old pair of jeans. She is unsmiling. She looks tough, challenging, but pretty.

“Sure, sweetheart. Why not?”

“Why don’t I just send him the photo and skip the letter?”

Her mother makes as if to swat her on the side of the head, play-angry. “Go on, lazy brat, write.”