“You make it sound so easy!” she grumbles. “What if Vanessa was making the whole thing up, and he isn’t my father at all?”

Funnily enough, this possibility has never occurred to her.

“Well, then he’ll just tell you to buzz off.”

“And then what?”

“We’ll find somewhere else for you to go. You can always go live with my aunt.”

Rat’s met Jérôme’s Corsican aunt, and she doesn’t think so; she’s never thought she was quite as cool as Jérôme and his family do, just because she lives with goats up a mountain. She rocks back and forth on Jérôme’s stool, trying to formulate words so persuasive that this stranger who’s never wanted to lay eyes on her will be irresistibly won over. She gets a sudden flashback to the last time she was agonizing over a letter to her unknown father. Remembering that long-ago birthday hoax makes her furious at her mother all over again, and she starts typing.

Under Subject, “I am your daughter Celia,” because Jérôme has told her that people don’t always open messages from an em-ail address they don’t recognize.

“Hello, my name is Celia Bonnet. My mother is Vanessa from Collioure. I am fifteen years old now. I am coming to London, and I would like to meet you. Send me an e-mail to this address, or call me at….” She starts to type the number, then remembers she’s lost her cell phone.

When Rat presses the Send button and the message disappears, she feels as if she’s walked off a cliff.

“Isn’t there any kind of Help-I-really-didn’t-mean-to-send-this button?”

Imagine being a spy on your own life.

That’s how Rat feels, living at the Cabreras’. Morgan sleeps in the bottom bunk in Solenne’s room; Rat has Emilie’s old room to herself.

It’s amazing how little difference it makes to their routine. In the mornings, Jean-Luc takes Rat to Victor Hugo, and Marielle takes Morgan and Solenne to school in Saint Féliu. In the afternoons, when they get back to Mas Cargol, instead of heading back to their own apartment, they go to Jérôme’s.

The only difference is that all day, Rat finds herself almost subconsciously listening out for Thierry’s car, glancing out the window every few minutes. And at night, she lies awake, imagining what she will say and do to him if he dares come back.

But evidently Vanessa’s managed to persuade Jens to give Thierry one more chance, because all week he’s gone.

Then one day, just when Rat might almost be beginning to relax, she awakens to find the Clio parked outside Vanessa’s apartment, and her mother and Thierry smooching in the doorway, Thierry’s hand grabbing her mother’s ass.