She faked a second “monthly.” Her breasts were lumpy and painful now, her stomach permanently distended and hard. Her appetite had returned with vehemence, and she polished off all those extra greens and meat portions effortlessly, gnawing on biscuits up in the dormitory at night as she battled with the nausea that came over her in waves, making her salivate so much that she had to keep swallowing and swallowing.

The French mistress noticed the constant gulping and told her she looked like a poisson. The gym mistress castigated her in front of the other girls for being uncharacteristically lazy and sluggish. The algebra mistress found her asleep on a desk in the middle of a lesson, gave her lines and reported her to Matron. Irene Nicholas noticed her remoteness, her incoherence and seeming inability to finish a sentence, the way she took to her bed at the slightest excuse and showed no signs of wanting to get up again. Finally Irene walked in on her in the bath when she was holding the razor, about to fake another “monthly.”

“Genevieve, don’t!” Irene slammed the door behind her and snatched the scissors away. “Nothing in this world is as bad as that.”

Genevieve, who hadn’t noticed that she’d left the door unlocked, let out a squeal, and then—realizing what Irene thought was happening—began to giggle.

“I don’t understand,” said the dismayed Irene. “What’s funny?”

Genevieve laughed harder, barely able to draw breath, tears of mirth streaming down her face, until she choked and coughed and the tears flowed.

“He’ll have to marry you,” said Irene, as they sat together on the bathroom floor, their knees drawn up to their chests. “Whoever he is…Have you told him yet?”

“No.” Genevieve was sodden and subdued in her bathrobe.

“Well, you better had.”

“You don’t understand. I can’t tell him.”

“What do you mean? You can’t hide it much longer, Jenny!”

“I know.” Her face was in her hands.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Irene grabbed hold of her, dragging those hands away from her face. “If you don’t get him to marry you—and fast—this could be the end of everything for you.”

Genevieve pulled away. “Leave me alone.”

“I just can’t believe you’ve done this. Nobody will want to know you, Jenny. Not your parents. Not the school.” She may as well have added, Not me.

“I said leave me alone! And don’t you dare tell anyone!”

In spite of what she’d said to Irene, Genevieve played truant the next day and got on the bus to town.