That mezzanine—Rat’s getting her own private bear’s lair, which no grown-up can be bothered to climb up to—is definitely the best thing that came out of Souad’s dying.

Dinner at the Cabreras’. The kids are plumped in a heap on the sofa, watching Peter Pan. Solenne, head on Jérôme’s shoulder, is almost asleep. Jérôme’s eyes are glazed and his thumb has slipped into his mouth. Jérôme has almost been shamed out of thumb-sucking, except when he watches a movie.

At the table, the grown-ups talk, and Rat, who’s already seen the film a million times, off-and-on listens. Vanessa is telling Marielle and Jean-Luc and Cristel about the judge who is in charge of Morgan, now that he’s become a ward of the state, and the bureaucratic hell she’s having to go through to become his legal guardian. They go on to discuss Souad’s debts and assets. Jean-Luc thinks he’s found someone who’ll buy her car for enough money to pay off what she still owes on it. Vanessa’s sold Souad’s furniture, it wasn’t much, but it helped cover the funeral.

Rat’s switched back to the movie, but when she sees Vanessa shooting a glance her way, she pricks up her ears.

“She’s being such a piss pot,” Vanessa’s complaining. “She just doesn’t seem to get it the boy doesn’t have anybody but us.”

“It’s normal, if she’s a bit jealous,” says Cristel.

“It’s not normal if—”

“It’s scary for her,” Marielle says, suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Well, think about it. Here’s another only child of a single mother, no family to speak of. If Souad dies, that means you could die, too. A child doesn’t want to have to consider that possibility.”

Vanessa obviously doesn’t like that answer. “I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard her calling Souad a whore—she sounded just like my fucking mother. I thought, Here we go again, one more hard-hearted sanctimonious fire-and-brimstone bitch in the family! You know what the judge said? He said, Madame, you’re a saint. I’d like to see the look on my mother’s face if she heard that. Madame, you are a saint.”

Rat’s had enough. “I’m not jealous,” she says, loudly enough to break into the flow of the grown-ups’ conversation. “And you’re not a saint.”

There is a surprised silence for a moment, then the grown-ups burst out laughing. She gets up in a huff, disentangling herself from the other children’s sleepy limbs, and stomps back to her house to bed.

Hard to say when Rat started to come round to the kid. It was gradual.