Vanessa’s on her feet now, leaning across the table. For a moment, Rat thinks her mother’s going to smack her. She’s angrier than Rat has ever seen her. “What kind of trash talk have you been listening to? You want to make out we’re living in a universe where innocent people get punished with horrible diseases just for doing what it’s in our own human nature to do? Listen to me, girl. You have something mean to say, you say it to me in your own words, you don’t come sneak-repeating gossip bored mothers tell each other in the village.”

“That’s not where I heard it,” mumbles Rat. In any case, it’s not Souad’s past or current profession that’s the point; it’s Rat’s right to be consulted before her own mother decides to take in somebody else’s child.

Vanessa glares at her. “Souad is a beautiful soul, a big brave woman who’s fighting for her life, who wants the best for her kid, just like I do.”

Rat subsides, grumbling. “Where’s he gonna sleep long-term? I’m damned if he’s gonna spend the rest of his life in my bed.”

“I’m going to get Laurent to make a little mezzanine for him, a sleeping loft.” Vanessa indicates where it will go. “We’ll take out the kitchen cupboard, and eat against that wall, instead.”

It’s true: the apartment is small, but its ceilings are high.

“Where’re you gonna get the money?”

“Monsieur Bordon will pay.”

Rat looks skeptical.

“He will,” Vanessa insists. “If we convert this place to a three-bedroom, he can up the rent. Doesn’t make any difference to us—we get extra benefits all around, with a second kid.”

So her mother has it all worked out. Never again will it be just the two of them.

“Mama?” It comes out in a tremulous little voice.

“Yes, my girl?”

“Mama, I don’t want to go back to school anymore.”

“Tell me about it, my girl.”

Rat tells. And Vanessa, being Vanessa—that is, in every way divinely unpredictable—listens to her story of betrayal and injustice, and is outraged in all the right places, and proud that Rat stood up for herself against Océane. Then she hauls Rat under the light, runs her fingers through her hair, and says, “But you know? That fat bitch was right. You do have lice again.”

Rat groans.

“And you know what else? I’m too dead-beat to do a thing about it. Go round to Marielle after school tomorrow and see if she’ll do the treatment for you.”

In the end, of course, the sleeping loft goes in Rat’s room, and it’s Rat who sleeps above, with a ladder to go up and down, while Morgan sleeps on a mattress on the floor.