A placid breeze was moving through the trees, and the air smelled of water. My cells were stretching like contented beasts. As I was coming up to the intersection, blurry stars appeared in the distance. The white van and I arrived at the traffic lights together. The lights turned green. The van didn’t move, and nor did I. My bag was slung across my body, and I clutched its buckled strap. Daring Audrey’s gun lay inside – that useless toy. Run, I commanded myself, run! But I was in the grip of a large, peaceful emotion. It was the calm that arrives when uncertainty thins like mist and the way forward shines clear. The whole year seemed to have been building to this moment. I thought, Here it is!
The lights switched back to red. The change released me. I sped across the intersection, against the lights, my bag thumping my hip. Rinaldi was at the wheel of the van, Candlewoman frozen beside him. Neither looked at me, although I was impossible to miss. Their eyes were fixed forward as if peering into the future. I kept running, and as I ran I realised that Bold, Sexy, Modern and Intelligent were all beside the point. The only word that counted was Woman. That was the reason I had to run.
When I could hear the pinball machines in the late-night cafe, I came to a stop. With my breath tearing up my chest, I looked back at the intersection. There was nothing there.
The last time I saw Sandrine, she invited me to her wedding. Riad’s papers had come through that week. ‘The bastards are afraid of workers, now that the Socialists are in. They think we’re going to rise up and cut their throats.’ Then she laughed. ‘No, their minds are too small to imagine a revolution. They’re frightened we’ll take away their pensions.’
I told her that on the night of the elections, there’d been a light in every room at the préfecture – tier upon tier of shining windows, including the mansards. Someone in the crowd said, ‘They’ll be going through all the files, getting rid of anything incriminating.’ I wondered if Monsieur Bisset was in his office, tearing up letters stamped Damned For All Eternity because they’d been written by people with unauthorised capital Ls.
On that Sunday evening, Lucio and I had got dressed and gone out when the shouts and the firecrackers began. People were surging through the centre of the city. Horns sounded nonstop, a victory tattoo. Music swelled from cafes, from cars. We linked arms with strangers, joining a human line that was wheeling across a street. A chant went up: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido! I spotted Dieter: he’d climbed onto the base of a statue and was taking photos of the crowd. He turned at my shout, but there were so many people between us that Lucio and I were swept on.