She was slouching a little as she spoke, staring intently at a point on the doorframe, sucking at her cigarette. The soft beauty Marguerite had caught earlier was gone; she looked sad, shrunken, hard.
‘I think it sounds like a good idea,’ Marguerite said, though she thought the opposite. If they wouldn’t let their children dress up in her clothes, why did Suki think they’d want her ornaments?
But Suki looked at her gratefully. ‘You think so? I think so too.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, it’s probably stupid to bother getting involved, but I just can’t bear hiding away in my house pretending I don’t know they all hate me. I live in Saint-Sulpice too. I have a right to be there.’
‘Of course.’
‘So. I want you to come to the fête and I want you to pretend to buy a few of my things.’
Marguerite laughed; she had expected something more onerous.
‘I know it’s pathetic,’ Suki said, smiling ruefully. ‘Will you do it though? I have money here, for you to spend.’ She fiddled with her bag again, took some notes out. ‘Here’s fifty euros. You can even keep whatever you buy. I’m basically giving it to you.’
‘Okay. I can come, but not for long.’
‘That’s fine. But you’ll definitely come?’
Marguerite felt uncomfortable, constricted, as she always did when she was asked to make a commitment.
‘As long as Jérôme is okay.’
‘Great. Okay. You’ll be there.’ She came in to put the money on the table. ‘Well, I’m going to let you be now, but thank you. I won’t forget it.’
She leant forward to kiss Marguerite on each cheek. Above the smoke, she smelt of vanilla or coconut – something too sweet.
She didn’t wake Jérôme for lunch; she let him sleep, and he only called her to him mid-afternoon by knocking on his headboard, so faintly she barely heard it.
‘I feel much better,’ he said when she went in. But his face was still wax-coloured, and his lips, usually wide and strangely full for a man, were puckered and pale.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘What are those?’ He pointed weakly at a small blue jug she’d placed on the table when he was asleep, holding a cluster of wild flowers she’d found in the garden. He looked at her with an expression she couldn’t decipher. It was wary, she thought, but not irritated; there was a softness in his face.
‘I found them in the olive groves, growing wild. Someone really needs to take over the garden; it could be so beautiful.’
‘It was,’ he said. ‘You’ve spent a while outside. You’re a little sunburnt.’
‘Surely I’m not,’ she said, touching her cheeks. ‘I wasn’t out there for long.’
‘Not burnt, a little tanned.’ He smiled, the very faintest of smiles.
She brought him bread and jam to eat, and sweet tea. The room smelt rancid from his morning of sickness, and she cleaned it as he ate.
‘I’m glad you’ve got an appetite,’ she said and he nodded, opening his mouth to take a bite. Some jam dripped off the bread and onto his chest, but he didn’t notice. There was a crumb fastened in the corner of his mouth. These things felt unbearably sad to her then; she came forward to wipe the jam away with a tissue, and he frowned.
‘You’re forever fussing.’
‘I’m going to change your sheets,’ she said when she’d taken his tray, and he nodded again. He leant into her arms as she lifted him up and they shuffled together towards the chair. It was odd, she realised, that she knew his smell more intimately than her own.
It was not until the next morning that Jérôme regained his usual strength: he had colour in his cheeks, sat upright in the bed. He was galvanised all the more by hunger; he snapped at her for food, refusing to let her clean his teeth first, and gobbled his toast loudly, flecks of spit collecting in the corners of his mouth.
‘I’d like chocolate,’ he said when he’d finished.
She smiled. ‘I don’t think we have any.’
‘Why not? Have you eaten it?’
‘We haven’t had any in the house for weeks. I didn’t know you particularly liked it.’
‘Well, don’t just presume,’ he said, his eyebrows screwed together to form a deep, fleshy crease between them. Marguerite noticed that a couple of the coarse white eyebrow hairs had grown long beyond the others, indeed beyond proportion; they strayed up towards his hairline, as if trying to replace the hair that had been lost there.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘Nothing.’ She filled his glass from the jug, gave it to him. ‘You must stay well hydrated today.’
But he pushed the glass away, and stared in front of him. ‘Get me something else to eat. And I don’t mean more bread, I’m sick to death of bread.’
As Marguerite walked through to the kitchen, she realised she was pleased by his bad temper, signifying as it did his return to relative health. She took raisin biscuits from a tin and arranged them on a plate to bring back to him, but when she re-entered his room and set the plate down on his bedside table he didn’t even register them.
‘I heard a voice here yesterday.’
‘When?’
‘You know when, come on. I’ve just remembered, I heard talking when I was drifting in and out of sleep. Yesterday. Come on, I’m not stupid.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Who was it? Was someone coming to see me?’
‘No,’ she said, and she saw something slacken in his face. A ripple passed over his forehead, around his eyes and mouth. His shoulders dropped. He stared down the bed for a moment, unfocused.
‘It was a woman from the village,’ she said, for the sake of saying something.
‘Name?’ he asked.
‘She’s called Suki.’
‘Suki Lacourse,’ he said immediately, his interest rekindled. ‘Arab, married to Philippe Lacourse. He’s a prime cretin. Why in God’s name was she here?’
‘Iranian. She just passed by.’
‘How do you know her?’
‘I’ve met her a few times in the village.’
‘So you’re socialising, are you? How nice for you.’
‘I’m not socialising.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘I spend every moment in an empty house with you.’
‘Henri Brochon was here last week. Suki Lacourse is dropping by on social visits. What next? I’m going to wake up to a party at the end of my bed.’
She couldn’t help smiling, then, because it was too ridiculous. He smiled too, unexpectedly; it was a wry smile, a little sheepish.
‘So you refuse to tell me why that woman was visiting the house. What could you possibly have to do with someone like that? She’s old enough to be your mother.’
‘She’s not even forty,’ she said. ‘And anyway, she had a favour to ask.’
He frowned. ‘I’d watch out for her, if I were you.’
‘Why?’