“Quite. We could use another savage like you in the family. Perhaps we should all move to Collioure, put Artemio in a French village school for a couple of years. I’m sure it would be much healthier for him, being with children whose fathers were fishermen and not Russian mafia bosses.”

Rat doesn’t want to think about this idea, because it sounds so nice, but she knows it’s just a fantasy, like Jérôme’s saying he’s going to quit lycée and go tend his aunt’s goats in Corsica.

“I think you are being too romantic about the French countryside,” she says. “My high school, it’s in a village, but there are metal detectors, there are drug raids. The kids who graduate, they aren’t going to be fishermen, because there aren’t any more fish. They’re going to be on welfare, like their parents.”

“Well, that’s the reality, isn’t it? You’ve got to meet it someday,” says Gillem, a bit vaguely. Then, with sudden energy, “Look, it’s odd, but I find it hard to call you ‘Celia.’ It’s odd, but—it’s so much my mother’s name. You don’t have another name, a middle name or a nickname or something, do you?”

“Vanessa calls me Rat.”

“Rat? Dreadful! That’s even worse than Celia. I might as well call you Cockroach. Why Rat?”

“When I was a baby, her pet name for me was ‘little mouse.’ Then one day, I got cross and said, ‘I’m not your little mouse; I’m a big big mouse.’ And Vanessa said, ‘A big mouse is a rat.’ So I said, ‘Okay then, I’m a rat.’ I don’t like Celia, either.”

“Rat has a little more—I don’t know, bite?—to it,” he says, smiling.

“I’d like to meet your mother one day. I didn’t even know for sure she was still alive.”

Gillem’s smile vanishes. “She’s not, really. And I don’t think it’s fair to let people meet her, in this condition. Although maybe not so ghastly as if you knew her before.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Didn’t you know? She has Alzheimer’s.”

“Oh.” Rat feels all the courage ebb out of her, leaving a terrible bleakness. “I … just thought she was sick or something. Isn’t she kind of young for Alzheimer’s?”

“She’s sixty-three.”

“Is it bad? I mean, is it full blown.”

“Fairly,” says Gillem.