It’s Lucas who sees them first. Sitting side-saddle on his moped, he reacts with surprise and joy when he sees Céline, but then pulls himself together and puts on a mask of indifference over his handsome face, which is studded with light-red patches. He massages the back of his neck, unsure of what to do: say hello or not, come up with a clever crack, an insult, pick a fight or vanish behind his mount. Ève and Vanessa, the ones Céline no longer speaks to, notice them. Manon gives a little shriek when she recognizes Céline. Unlike the other girls, Manon keeps sending her friend concerned messages every day. Then Enzo smiles at her, like before, so she turns to Saïd and her sister, her eyes shining, her hands nervous and all over the place – forehead, hair, ears, the bottom of her bag.

“I’m going to talk to Manon.”

“Are you sure?” Johanna hisses.

She and Saïd watch her walk up to the others, belly forward, an unwelcome, bulky appendage. The time for resuming her position as queen is over, so now it’s just a matter of existing.

“I don’t understand why she even gives these shitheads a second thought.”

“They’re her mates, Jo.”

“They’re morons.”

Jo doesn’t approach. She looks at them, one by one, as they lift their cans to their lips, work their hips and arms and overdo their laughter. She sticks her hands into the back pockets of her shorts and does a U-turn.

*

On the other bank, Patrick is watching the girls. He’s sitting on a café terrace, drinking a perroquet cocktail. It’s Sunday, there’s no work scheduled, so it’s just an idle, hot day; it’s good. He’s spruced himself up, scrubbed flakes of paint and concrete from under his nails with a brush. He fiddles nervously with his swizzle stick, a naked woman on top of the orange plastic tube. Patrick absently rubs the pin-up’s miniature hips with his thumbs. Valérie is saying something, telling some unpleasant story about the sorting manageress, a bitch who docked their pay because of a cigarette break that went on a bit too long. It was supposed to be temporary, the salad-sorting at Crudettes, because she was hoping to find something else but have a kid first, except that the kid never came and she ended up keeping her job. But with the latest round of restructuring, she doesn’t know if she can stay at Crudettes. She’s scared of being on the next redundancy list, so better not take long cigarette breaks.