… Mireille claims that her pet project, the Foix Institute, has, in its thirteen years of existence, funded the advanced creative degrees of almost 10,000 individuals of all different ages—many of them Viloki-born, while others are refugees housed under the Foix Institute Visa program. These numbers sound extraordinary—unbelievable. But media tends to focus, understandably, on the dubious practices of Hero Pharm—the institute’s greatest donor—and I was reluctant to cover the institute at all in this article, which aimed to celebrate Mireille’s return to the screen. However, during our teatime, she presses me to speak about her pet project on multiple occasions, and I finally bite. Can Mireille offer specific examples as to how the Foix Institute has changed life on the island in the past thirteen years? I wonder.

At this point in the interview, a Hero Pharm publicist darts forward with a stack of letters from island residents who have benefited from the Foix Institute—but Mireille stops him with a kind word and an outstretched hand. “It’s so difficult to quantify that, Edward,” she admits to me, her charisma shining through. “I just interviewed our class of 1991, to collect information about ways to improve.” Her blue eyes cloud over as she stirs her milky, lukewarm tea. “I—I often feel like life is slipping through my fingers. And I never feel like I’m doing enough with the time I’ve been gifted.”

It’s only at the end of our teatime that I notice Mireille is noticeably pregnant under her cream Yves Saint Laurent coat.

“Hero and I are welcoming a baby girl later this year, around the time my new film releases,” she explains. “I can feel her kicking right now.”

To my chagrin, my hand reaches out instinctively. She graciously agrees to let me feel the kicks. To feel life growing inside this woman I’ve watched grow up on-screen is one of the strangest—and most surreal—interview moments of my career.

Still, I’m left wondering: Will motherhood distract her from her pet project? Or worse—from embarking on future film projects?

“I imagine motherhood, like the institute, will require hard work and so much love,” she says, eyes sharp. “But happily, the act of loving only increases your capacity to love.”

I’ve watched you girls, playing with your spoiled friends in Limatra, ignoring the truth about yourselves and your family, except when you dip your toes into scummy Noxim waters. You haven’t changed since you were young. I watched you then, too. You never once noticed me, because, while you may pretend at being good, you are not.

Your mother was a hypocrite, and it seems you both are, too. She said she wanted to help people at any cost, but everyone in her life undid the work she started, and she knew it. They used me, and she knew it.

I blame your father most. Do you miss him, girls?