Then there was Suze and the headscarf, of course. I hear she’s going to have to wear the scarf until her hair grows out, and it’s not a good look for Suzanne at all. She looks like an angry bowling ball. Plus people have started going Allah Akhbar when she walks past, and Chantal laughed, and Suze was upset, and now they’ve fallen out completely.

So then Chantal spent all lunchtime with her other friends, and Suze came to complain and to cry on my shoulder, but I suppose I wasn’t feeling too sympathetic just then, and besides, I was with someone else.

Which brings me to the third thing.

It happened this morning, during Break. The others were playing the tennis-ball game, except for Jean-Loup Rimbault, who was reading as usual, and a few loners (the Muslim girls, mostly) who never play at anything.

Chantal was bouncing the ball to Lucie, and when I came in, she said – Annie’s It! – and then everyone was laughing and throwing the ball across the room to each other and shouting – Jump! Jump!

Another day I might have joined in. It’s a game, after all, and it’s better to be It than to be left out altogether. But today I’d been practising Zozie’s attitude.

And I thought: what would she do? And I knew straight away that Zozie would rather die than be It.

Chantal was still shouting, ‘Jump, Annie, jump!’ as if I were a dog, and for a second I just looked at her, as if I’d never seen her properly before.

I used to think she was pretty, you know. She ought to be; she spends enough time on her appearance. But today I could see her colours, too, and Suzanne’s; and it was so long since I’d seen them that I couldn’t help staring now at how ugly – how really ugly – both of them were.

The others must have seen something, too, because Suze dropped the ball and no one picked it up. Instead I sensed them forming a circle, as if there was a fight in the air, or something extra-special to see.

Chantal didn’t like me staring at all. ‘What’s wrong with you today?’ she said. ‘Don’t you know it’s rude to stare?’

I just smiled and kept on staring.

Behind her, I saw Jean-Loup Rimbault look up from the book he was reading. Mathilde was watching too, her mouth open just a little bit; and Faridah and Sabine had stopped talking in their corner, and Claude was smiling, just a bit, the way you do when it’s raining and the sun comes out unexpectedly for just a second.

Chantal gave me one of her sneery looks. ‘Some of us can afford to get a life. I guess you just have to make your own entertainment.’