8:47 A.M.
I’m scared.
There are no sounds any more, nothing in the house or the garage. All I can hear are my little fists banging against the bathroom door.
Louder and louder.
Finally, Papa comes out of the shower. He’s changed his clothes. He takes me in his arms.
“I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here.”
It’s weird. He doesn’t ask me why I was banging so hard on the door. Suddenly, I don’t dare tell him about the car I heard in the garage. Just there, behind that door. I think about something else, something even stranger. Papa’s hair isn’t wet. He must have dried it. Either that or he didn’t put his head under the water. That’s my favorite bit of taking a shower, putting my head under the water.
“Shall we go, darling? We don’t want to hang around any longer.”
Papa crams clothes into a large bag: trainers, trousers, sweaters. Apparently it’s cold where we’re going. I find this hard to believe. Ever since I’ve been here, on Réunion, the weather has been hotter than it’s ever been in France. And the boy who lives in this house, the one whose shorts and shirt I’m wearing, is a bit bigger than me, and I would have liked to take my time choosing other clothes, and trying them on.
“That’ll do,” says Papa.
He’s also told me I mustn’t be difficult, that the blue-haired old lady has already been very kind, lending us all her things as well as her house.
Papa empties the cupboard over the sink. He grabs packets of cookies and shoves them into the bag.
I pull another face.
“Not those ones, Papa, they don’t look nice.”
Papa says nothing. He takes out the biscuits and puts them on the table. He’s annoyed. He looks at me strangely again, the same way he did earlier, when he came out of the shower. Maybe it’s because of my big brother, who’s dead. I think he probably looked a bit like me and that’s why Papa’s asked me to disguise myself as a boy.
I wish I had a photograph of my big brother. Papa grabs the bag. I look up at him.
“Are we going far, Papa?”
Papa’s voice sounds annoyed too.
“Yes, I told you . . . we’re going to the other end of the island, to find Maman.”
He moves towards the garage door. I hesitate for a second, and then it comes out.
“Papa . . . I heard a car noise earlier, while you were taking your shower. As if it stopped just there . . . in . . . in the garage.”
Papa gives me a frightened look, as if I’ve just told him that I phoned the police and told them where we are.
“Did you . . . did you see anything?”
“No, Papa. Nothing. The garage door didn’t open. No one came in.”
Papa strides through the house and I jog behind him. Papa opens the garage door and turns back to me.
“Stay there, sweetheart. I’m going to check.” He closes the door behind him.
I’m expecting to have to wait for hours, but Papa comes back almost straight away. He smiles at me, but I can tell he doesn’t mean it.
“So?”
“It’s nothing, Sopha. You must have been mistaken. There’s . . . there’s no one there.”
Papa is lying. And he’s not very good at it. I know this, but I play along anyway.
“Well, that’s good, Papa. I was a bit scared.”
“Stay here, Sopha. I’m just going to take a look around the garden to make sure the coast is clear. As soon as I call you, come on out.”
“Be careful that the police don’t see you.”
“That’s nice of you, sweetheart.”
He hugs me, then goes off outside.
What is there, in the garage?
What is Papa hiding from me now?
I have to know.
I open the door.
In the garage is a yellow car. Small, round and shiny. I don’t know what make it is.
I walk towards it.
There’s someone behind the wheel. I move closer. I recognize her now. It’s the old lady with blue hair.
She sits there, stiff, on the driver’s seat. Her blue glasses have fallen from her nose. I move forward again, silently. It’s as if she’s fallen asleep.
I put my hand on the yellow door and stand on tiptoes. Straight away, I’m sorry I did this.
For a second, I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Then I start screaming!
The blue-haired old lady has a knife sticking out of her throat!
There’s blood all over her collar, on her chin, on her chest, like she can’t eat properly and has spilt something all down herself. The blue dress she’s wearing is all wet, almost purple, the same color as her hair where it’s soaked in blood.
I’m about to scream again, to scream loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood, but a hand closes over my mouth.
A big, hairy hand belonging to a man, although all I can see of him is his shadow.