I mean, what’s the point? I asked Jean-Loup, and he said she must be very insecure. Well, perhaps that’s true. But it’s been nothing but trouble since last week. Books going missing from out of my desk; my schoolbag knocked over and my things ‘accidentally’ kicked all over the floor. People I’ve always rather liked suddenly don’t want to sit next to me any more. And yesterday I saw Sophie and Lucie playing a stupid game with my chair, pretending there were bugs on it, trying to sit as far away from where I’d been sitting as possible, as if there was something disgusting there.

And then we had basketball, and I hung all my clothes in the locker room as usual, and when I got there afterwards, someone had taken my new shoes, and I looked for them all over the place, until at last Faridah pointed them out, all scuffed and dusty behind the radiator, and although I couldn’t prove it was Chantal, I knew.

I just knew.

Then she started on the chocolate shop.

‘I hear it’s very nice,’ she said. That snigger of hers, as if nice were some kind of secret code word that only she and her friends could understand. ‘What’s it called?’

I didn’t want to say, but I did.

‘Ooooo – nice,’ said Chantal, and they sniggered again, that little group of friends she has: Lucie and Danielle and the other hangers-on, like Sandrine, who used to be really nice to me, but who only talks to me now when Chantal isn’t around.

All of them look a bit like her now; as if being Chantal could be something catching, like a glamorous kind of measles. All of them have the same ironed hair, cut into layers with a little flick at the very ends. All of them wear the same scent (this week it’s Angel), and the same shade of pearly pink lipstick. I’ll die if they turn up at the shop. I know I will. I’ll actually die. To have them staring and giggling – at me, at Rosette, at Maman with her arms gloved in chocolate to the elbow and that hopeful look – are these your friends?

Yesterday, I told Zozie.

‘Well, you know what to do. It’s the only way, Nanou; you have to confront them. You have to fight back.’

I knew she’d say that. Zozie’s a fighter. But there are some things you can’t do just with attitude. Of course, I know I look a lot better since we talked. Most of it’s about standing up straight and practising that killer smile; but I wear what I like now, rather than what Maman thinks I ought to wear, and although I stand out from the others more, I feel so much better, so much more me.