The cars slowed down and reached the ground. A kind of siren announced the end of the jolts; Enzo’s cries finally alerted everybody and people flocked to get Céline out of the chrome-plated car. Sauveur cut the music – at last, Jo had time to tell herself – and rushed out of his booth. He had a good rant at everyone so they’d get out of the way, approached Céline and gave her a big slap, the first of many. Alerted by some kids, the parents ran over, along with Patrick and his wife. When the parents reached the ride, Céline finally sat up, opened her eyes, bent double and vomited at Enzo’s feet. Jo’s snigger marked the start of real trouble.

“What’s wrong with her?” her father asked, his voice feeble and soaked in aniseed, vaguely worried.

Céline avoided her father’s eye. She must have forbidden herself to think about it, pretending for many weeks, squashing her swollen breasts in a bra that was too tight. Unless she’d known from the start and pretended, as though it could just go away if you refused to believe it. But now she finally understood, when warm bile flowed up under her tongue like it had every day for a long time, and she wasn’t the only one.

“Your daughter’s not pregnant, is she?” Patrick’s wife suddenly blurted out.

Horizons

“The first time, it’s like a knitting needle piercing your insides,” Céline had said.

“Then why do you do it?” Jo had asked, surprised, her mouth twisted in a grimace, clutching at her stomach over her belly button as though that’s where it came in through.

She knew perfectly well where it came in through, it’s not like she was stupid. But a knitting needle, that was a bit too graphic. She was thirteen, Céline fourteen.

“No, but afterwards it gets better.”

It was two years ago, in “their” borie, that Céline explained why afterwards it got better. Bories, stone sheds in the south, are like bunkers on the beaches in the north, offering shelter beneath their stacked-up stones to clandestine smokers and secrets – and sometimes first fucks. And tramps.

“What’s it like after?”

“Better, I told you. Weird, but quite nice.”

She wrinkled her nose, smiling, her legs folded under her. The girls were slapping mosquitoes on their bare thighs. Jo’s were also attractive, but that didn’t particularly matter.

At just fourteen, Céline’s triumphant breasts already heralded a bright future if she was able to use those charms. She soon started to attract the kind of appreciative, disrespectful looks from men that would get them a long way; in fact, she already belonged to these men. It took a while for her father to realize that Céline, true to the stereotype, knew without ever having learned. He’d been the first to praise her for it, proud as though she were a heifer, so he shouldn’t have been surprised. Céline knew she was beautiful and took advantage of this, since she couldn’t see anything beyond her talent for attracting men. As far as Céline was concerned, the horizon went as far as she could see. From her home, it took in the Luberon hills. From the windows of the technical lycée, she could push it as far as Mont Ventoux. Beyond that, her sister’s horizon began. But that story was yet to come.