There were changes in me.

I didn’t know, but Maman saw them first. I’d come back from a day’s walking with a smile, or I’d be singing, and this puzzled her.

“Why are you singing? Stop it, it’s annoying.” She saw me brushing the knots out of my hair with a thistle head and said, “Vain, Eponine … ? You’ve not been that before.”

Maman noticed too that I was stealing less than I ever had. One day she looked up from her sewing and said, “You’re bringing back nothing these days—nothing! What’s wrong with you? Are you actually giving those letters to people? Those letters that Papa wrote so well?”

I shrugged. I didn’t want to lie.

“Well, do it! For heaven’s sake! Azelma’s stealing well, so why can’t you? The weather might be warmer, but we still need to eat!” Maman returned to her sewing, tugged the needle fiercely. “You seem … distracted. And I don’t like it, Eponine. Do you hear?”

Azelma was always stealing well. She returned with her pockets jangling, and our parents rubbed their hands and kissed her. She came back with all sorts of food—a haunch of goat or a basket of eggs. In late summer she rushed home and untied her bodice and skirts in the middle of the room and dozens of plums fell down around her.

“See! I can steal anything!” She laughed. “The grocer didn’t even notice!”

That night, with all the plums around us, I said, “We’ve enough fruit to feed the whole of the Gorbeau if we want to …”

“Which we don’t,” snapped Papa. “Why would we want to share what’s ours? With that wheezy couple in Room Seven or that sour old churchgoing cripple who talks to himself, in Room Nine?”

“Or,” said Maman, “that snooty, well-dressed boy next door, in Room Four? I won’t share a thing with him. I bet he’s got money hidden away.”

Azelma swallowed. “Really? Then maybe we should give him one of Papa’s letters? Let’s trick him too.”

Maman grinned, her mouth full of plums. “A wonderful idea! Do it now, Azelma! Have you got a letter?”

I spoke up. “Room Four? Let me, Maman.”

She flinched. “You? Miss Goody-Two-Shoes?”

I nodded. My stomach felt hard and my hands shook, but I said, “Yes, I’ll go. It’s my turn, after all.”

Papa spat out a plum stone. “Don’t mess it up—do you hear?”

*  *  *

I went to the corner. I rinsed my face and washed my hands.

I can do this. I can speak to him.

I trembled. I didn’t want to trick him but at least I had a reason to speak to him now. My insides turned over and over.

I picked up one of Papa’s letters.

I went out into the corridor and stood in front of his door. The number 4 looked back at me. I smoothed my hair and cleared my throat.

Take a deep breath, I told myself. Be brave.

I knocked three times: bang-bang-bang.

His voice! It called out, “Come in, Madame Bourgon!”

I opened the door. “It isn’t Madame Bourgon, Monsieur.”

There he was—sitting at a writing desk. He wore a dark blue shirt and woolen breeches, and his feet were in socks, without shoes. There were shadows under his eyes like he hadn’t been sleeping. He wore the slight crease between his eyes that I knew. “Oui, Mademoiselle?”

“Excuse me, Monsieur. I live next door, in Room Five. We met once—on the stairs? I ran into you, and …” I paused. Of course he didn’t remember but I couldn’t help feeling crushed. “I’ve got a letter for you.”

I held it out. He kept looking at my face for a moment, and then he reached for the note. “I remember. Back in the winter? You were upset, I think. Even though you said you were all right.”

He did remember!

I nodded.

“Had someone hurt you?”

“Only with words.”

He gave a small smile. “Sometimes words can be the most hurtful things of all.” He opened the letter and started to read.

His room was much better than ours. It was the same size, with a hearth in it, but he also had a bed with a proper coverlet and a desk with a matching chair, and a mirror in a fine frame. What was the frame worth? (I’d been raised to ask such things.) And there was a piece of material at the window—a curtain. I’d not seen curtains since we’d left Montfermeil.

There was a bookcase too. Without thinking, I went to it. It had been years since I’d held or read a book. I pulled one off the shelf. “Books! You have books!”

He looked up, surprised. “You read?”

“I used to. I know I don’t look much—all rags and bones—but I learned to read when I was very small and I loved it. I read about Paris, and those books made me want to come here. Sometimes I’d read to my little brother …” I paused. In a quieter voice I said, “It’s been a long time since I read a book.”

What else could I tell him? I said, “I like walking too. I’ve walked and walked through Paris and seen so much …” I couldn’t stop suddenly, found myself babbling all my secrets, as if now that I’d started talking I might never stop. “And how white Notre-Dame looks at night and the grassy slopes of Champ de Mars, and the boulevards. I’ve peeped into theaters! And I’d love to see a proper play, like ladies do. Maybe one day. Paris is so beautiful, Monsieur! Before I came here, I used to sleep in ditches or under an upturned boat—yes, I know how that sounds! But it wasn’t so bad. We could swim, and catch fish there … I think there is beauty in most things, if you look for it, don’t you? Even the dirtiest things can be lovely, underneath. I knew a man who said that the speckled peaches were the sweetest of all, and I like that. There can be light in dark places—don’t you think, Monsieur Marius?”

I’d said too much. But it was hard to be calm, and my head and heart were racing.

He stared at me. He looked amused and puzzled. “You know my name?”

I blushed. “Oui. I heard … Madame Bourgon say it …” It was the truth.

“Then I should know yours. It would be fair, wouldn’t it?”

I smiled. “Eponine.”

“Eponine?”

“I was named after a heroine in one of Maman’s books.”

“C’est un joli nom. And it sounds like you’ve had an interesting life, Eponine. Sleeping under boats?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

Marius lifted the letter. “Did you write this?”

I winced. The letter … “It’s not my work … it’s my father’s. Please forgive me for giving it to you. It’s full of lies and I didn’t want to give it to you but I’ve got no real choice in it. My mother’s crippled. My father is … well, he ordered me to give you this and I can’t disobey him. We’re penniless, you see.”

“Many are.” He looked out the window. “If the souls who died forty years ago in that revolution could see us now …” Then he looked back to me. “Aren’t there better ways of trying to get a sou or two?”

I felt so ashamed. All my talk of books and beauty suddenly seemed very foolish; I’m a grubby thief, that’s all. “There are. And I do try. But it’s hard to get a job when you’re someone like me.”

He folded the letter and handed it back. “Well, you’ve been honest enough in explaining the note to me. And, Eponine, I know how poor you are. I’ve seen your family on the stairs and I’ve caught your sister dipping her hands in my coat pocket …” He opened a drawer in his desk and offered me a five-franc coin.

I gasped. Five francs? That was more money than I’d stolen in months and months. My parents would be so happy if I handed it to them—but I shook my head. “I can’t take that. It feels wrong.”

“Why? You aren’t stealing it. I’m offering it willingly.”

I suddenly felt very sad. I didn’t want his pity; I wanted something else. Pity was the last thing I wanted. “But, Monsieur, it’s your money.”

“And so I can choose to spend it how I like. Take it. You need it more than I do. Have you seen how thin you are, how unwell you look?”

My shame was greater than ever then. The word unwell meant ugly. Thin meant boyish, and not like a girl at all. In all my dreams, he’d told me I was beautiful—but those were just stupid dreams.

I could barely speak to him. I reached for the coin.

“Buy food with it.”

“Thank you,” I murmured. And I hurried from his room with tears in my eyes.

*  *  *

The others cooed over the five francs. Maman stroked me and smiled.

“He must be a proper fool, that boy,” said Papa. “Good to know.”

But I thought, No, he isn’t a fool! He wasn’t tricked, he was kind, that’s all. And I comforted myself by thinking that a little food and summer sun might make me look much better, and maybe he’d meet me out in the street and say, Goodness, how you’ve changed, Eponine! You don’t look unwell anymore. I looked back at each word he’d said to me. C’est un joli nom—did that have meaning in it?

I stared at the wall between us that night. I imagined what he might be doing at that moment—sitting at his desk, or drawing the curtain, or taking off his shoes and lying down on that coverlet. Might he be looking at his books, thinking, Eponine has touched these … ? Briefly I pretended; it was a nice daydream to have. But I knew the truth: I looked thin and unwell, with bruises and hollow cheeks. Of course he wasn’t thinking of me.