So I told her some of what Zozie told me. She listened, forgetting to look at the floor.

‘I couldn’t do that,’ she said at last, but I noticed a hopeful look in her eyes, and this morning at the bus stop I thought she looked different: straighter and more confident, and for the first time since I’d known her, she was wearing something that wasn’t black. It was just an ordinary top, but dark red and not too baggy, and I said, that’s nice, and Mathilde looked confused, but pleased, and for the first time ever, went smiling to school.

All the same, it feels kind of weird. To be suddenly – well, not popular, exactly, but something like it, anyway; to have people look at you differently; be able to change the way they think . . .

How could Maman ever give that up? I wish I could ask her; but I know I can’t. I’d have to tell her about Chantal and Co.; and about the peg-dolls; and Claude and Mathilde; and Roux; and Jean-Loup—

Jean-Loup was back in school today, looking a bit pale, but cheerful enough. Turns out his illness was only a cold, but his heart thing makes him delicate, and even a cold can be serious. Still, today he was back, taking pictures again, watching the world through his camera. Jean-Loup takes pictures of everyone: teachers, the janitor, pupils, me. He takes them very fast, so that no one has time to change what they’re doing, and sometimes this gets him into trouble – especially with the girls, who want to be able to primp and pose—

‘And wreck the picture,’ said Jean-Loup.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Because a camera sees more than the naked eye.’

‘Even ghosts?’

‘Those too.’

Well, it’s funny, I thought; but he’s totally right. He’s talking about the Smoking Mirror and how it can show you things that you might not see in the normal way. He doesn’t know the old symbols, of course. But perhaps he’s been taking pictures for so long that he’s learnt Zozie’s trick of focusing – of seeing things as they really are, and not the way people want them to be. That’s why he likes the cemetery; he’s looking for things the eye doesn’t see. Ghost-lights, the truth, or something like that.

‘So what do I look like, according to you?’

He flicked through his gallery of pictures and showed me a shot of myself, taken that Break just as I was running out into the yard.

‘It’s a bit blurry,’ I said – my arms and legs were all over the place – but my face was all right, and I was laughing.

‘It’s you,’ said Jean-Loup. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Well, I couldn’t figure out whether he was being big-headed or whether he’d paid me a compliment, so I just ignored it and looked at the rest.