She told me that for women like us, women who came from nothing, life was one long battle and that we would always have to fight for everything. “The strong and the weak are not always who you think they are,” she said. “There are lots of people who wage private, painful wars.” The real task was learning to lie over the long term. And to lie to other people, you first have to learn to lie to yourself.

There’s only one way to lie, Fanny, and that is to repudiate the truth, to obliterate the truth with your lie until, eventually, your lie becomes the truth.

Annabelle walked me along the platform to my carriage and kissed me goodbye. It is possible to live with a blood memory, she said. She told me she knew this from personal experience. And she left me to think about this quote: “Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”

14

The Prom

1.

Fanny concluded her story in a fever close to frenzy. She was no longer sitting on the carved stone steps but standing in the middle of the church, teetering as though on the verge of collapse. As she took a few steps and staggered between the pews, she reminded me of the last passenger on a sinking ship.

I was scarcely in better shape. I could hardly breathe. My mind was racing; I was unable to put these events in any sort of perspective. Vinca had been murdered by Fanny, and my mother had helped to dispose of the body. I couldn’t reject the truth, but it seemed utterly at odds with everything I knew about the characters of both my mother and my friend.

“Fanny, wait!”

She had just raced out of the church. A second earlier, she had looked as though she might faint, but now she was running as though her life depended on it.

By the time I stumbled out of the church and onto the square, Fanny was long gone. I tried to run after her, but I had twisted my ankle and she had a head start and was faster than me. I limped through the village and down the chemin des Vachettes as quickly as I could. There was a parking ticket on my car. I crumpled it up, slid in behind the steering wheel, and tried to decide what to do next.

My mother. I needed to talk to my mother. She was the only one who could confirm what Fanny had told me, the only one who could help me disentangle the lies from the truth. Having turned off my phone in the church, I now turned it on again. No word from my father, but a text message from Maxime asking me to call him back. I put the key in the ignition as I hit Redial.