There was a set of cleanish clothes she’d been saving for this meeting—cutoff army fatigues and an antinuclear T-shirt inherited from Pauline, shorts and a Pokémon T-shirt for Morgan—but their knapsacks have been full of dirty clothes so long that their clean clothes smell equally rank. And she hasn’t shaved her legs in so long that they look downright wolfish.

To make matters worse, Rat’s period’s come on when she wasn’t expecting it, and since she didn’t have any English change for the Tampax machine, she’s had to make do with stuffing her underpants full of stiff paper towels.

Nonetheless, Rat does as you do in her part of the world, she makes to kiss the woman on both cheeks. The woman looks star-tied, then laughs, as if she’s never been kissed before, and then she hugs Rat to her big bosom, and laughs again.

“Est-ce que tu as payé le taxi? No?” She disappears down the path and is back in a moment. “Let me see you,” she says.

She puts her hand on the girl’s shoulders.

“My God,” she says. “Tu es très, très grande. What are you, five eleven, six feet?”

Rat feels as if the woman is pushing her down, trying to make her smaller. “I dunno.”

And then the woman spots Morgan. “Hello there, who are you?” Now her voice is bright and cheery, the same lilt with which she greeted Rat.

“His name is Morgan.”

“Morgan?” repeats the woman. She laughs. “That’s a very odd name for a French boy.”

“Not really. It’s pretty popular. There are a couple of other Morgans in your school, aren’t there, Mo?”

Morgan nods noncommitally.

“Well, pleased to meet you, Morgan, je suis Kate, la femme de Gillem. And Morgan is—how old? Quel age as tu, Morgan?”

“Nine.”

“Shouldn’t he be in school? Ecole? Tu ne vas pas à l’école?”

“He’s on holiday.”

“So your sister’s taking you on holiday? Aren’t you a lucky boy. Come in. You two must be exhausted. Dinner won’t be a moment; we’ll eat as soon as Gillem …”

Rat follows Kate inside.

They have come into a large living room. The walls are painted a saffron yellow. There is an enormous canvas on one wall, clotted with gashes and splotches of violent blacks, dark reds, purple. At the far end of the room is a red lacquer table, set for dinner, and beyond it, French doors leading out into what looks like a garden.