shall I?’ she said in English. By now Tess had a competent grasp of the language. Simone’s lessons hadn’t been fast enough so she had taken matters into her own hands, devouring every book and magazine she could, reading it alongside her dictionary into the small hours of the night. ‘See if we can’t get you settled in. My name is Madame Aubert and I am your house mistress.’
Simone kissed her farewell. ‘I’ll see you in a few weeks, darling …’
As Tess followed Madame, she eliminated the echo that rebounded through her brain. A few weeks … That was exactly what Julia had said as she had been driven away from Patagonia. Fuck them, she thought. They don’t deserve my tears.
The school was like a cathedral. Stained-glass windows spilled red and gold on to the cool, chequered floor. Baroque pillars ran to a huge glass dome, ornate with gold, and weeping religious figures. ‘This is where chapel is held in the morning,’ said Madame Aubert. Through that space they emerged into a giant courtyard—’La Cour Henri Jaurès’—which was marked with white and red lines and a vertical pole at each end that was capped with a net. The surrounding structures were high and arched and, above, through little square windows, excited squeals could be heard drifting from the dormitories, against a blast of music. Up a set of winding stairs, Madame Aubert led her down a corridor and pushed open the farthest door.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Your home from home.’
The room had ten beds, five down each side, each pristinely made with the sheets pulled tight, and with an accompanying side cabinet and closet. Madame Aubert informed her that supper was at six in the dining room and left her to unpack.
It was eerily quiet. Tess went to the window, which faced away from the courtyard and towards the rest of the school: a collection of grey-slate rooftops, still slick from the morning’s rain. She removed the items from her trunk and laid them on the shelves, like someone else’s belongings. With a jolt, she realised she had left behind the diary she’d been keeping, tucked behind the bed at Simone’s mansion.
The diary had become her steadfast friend, and she had spilled into it her innermost emotions—about Julia, about Calida, about the life she’d left behind; about her regrets and hopes and the strange land she now found herself in, unsure which way was forward, afraid of her own powers because she had implored the gods for this providence and somehow they had answered. She fingered the locket around her neck. Every time she went to take it off, something stopped her. She wanted to rip it from its chain, stamp on it, toss it from a cliff, but somehow she was unable to.
She was distracted by a burst of giggles at the door.
A clique of girls tumbled in. They stopped when they saw her. Leading the pack was, of course, Emily Chilcott, resplendent in her power zone, and at her side stood the redhead Tess had seen at the gates. The redhead had the most incredible-coloured hair Teresa had ever seen—bright, flaming orange, with golden highlights around the top like a halo. Emily said something in English—Simone had explained she was ‘too thick to get a handle on French’—and they all laughed again, but not in a way you could join in with. Tess decided they could bitch and laugh at her all they liked. She had been through worse than anything Emily could throw at her.
The group paraded down the aisle between the beds, showing off lithe, tanned legs and releasing a mist of musky scent. With a sinking feeling, Tess realised they were her roommates. Madame Aubert had probably arranged it, thinking she would want to be with her family. Emily, her family? That was some joke.
‘I’m Tess,’ she told the redhead, deciding to ignore her stepsister. But Emily was having none of it. She charged forward, blue eyes flashing, and like a magnet drew the others into formation. She smiled openly and said:
‘They don’t care who you are. They’re my friends, and you’re the impostor. Rest assured, Teresa, you won’t survive here. I’ll make sure of it.’
As the redhead passed, her slanted green eyes narrowed in malice. Tess felt a sharp yank at the back of her neck, so quick as to be unsure whether it had happened. Her locks were scarcely mended after the attack. Despite Simone’s efforts, Emily’s scissors had triumphed. ‘Nice hair,’ said the redhead unkindly, and closed the door.
It was easy enough to stay away from Emily during the day—Tess spent most of her time in Fast-Track French and was scheduled to join the main curriculum at the end of spring term—but, at night, there was no escape. Emily’s clique clustered into one another’s beds after lights-out and giggled and tittered under the sheets, sucking on illicit squares of bitter chocolate and sipping from bottles of Orangina, which Emily’s outside contact had supplemented with vodka. Sometimes they would throw things at her in the dark—nothing that hurt, just a sock that one of them had worn in Games, or a balled-up note written in French that she couldn’t understand and, sometimes, Emily’s favourite, a tampon or a sanitary towel from the supply under her bed.
The redhead’s name was Fifine Bissette, but everyone called her Fifi. She was the only daughter of France’s premier power couple; her father was a renowned surgeon whose services graced only the affluent, while her mother was an ex-model-turned-socialite. A running joke at Sainte-Marthe was that Fifi’s papi had once borrowed cold-blooded Fifi’s heart for another patient and forgotten to replace it.
She and Emily made the perfect match.
Through it all, Tess forged her vendetta. Slowly but surely, her plan took shape, and became the fuel that kept her going. She used her hatred for Emily as a way to endure the monotony and loneliness of the days at Sainte-Marthe, in which she got up alone, dressed alone, and ate breakfast alone; in which she withstood her solo French classes with Madame Fontaine and saw no other girls, then when she did felt too unsure of the language to attempt a friendship, and the longer she left it the more difficult it became and the stranger they decided she was. She used her anger as a passage through the emptiness of the night, the moonlight and the taunting laughs, as she lay still as a corpse because then they might leave her alone.
Every moment, she was thinking. She was plotting.
It was risky, but the risk was worth it. Tess had no fear. She had nothing. In the days and weeks since the adoption revelation, she had shut out the world. It had been necessary, a method of reassembly, of digging inside herself and cancelling out all those weak parts, the parts that cried for her twin and longed to be held by her.
She had wiped the slate clean and started again—with the person she wanted to be: strong, intrepid, powerful. Emily deserved it. She deserved her revenge.
The following week, before chapel, Tess approached Fifi in the waiting line. The other girls backed away: breaking rank was the ultimate offence.
‘Where’s Emily?’ Tess asked in French.
‘None of your business.’
‘I wanted to wish her luck.’
Fifi was sceptical. ‘With what?’
‘The song,’ Tess widened her eyes, ‘for Monsieur Géroux? Oh, no, don’t tell me she forgot. Aubert will go crazy—she told us about this ages ago!’
‘Told you about what?’ Fifi was impatient, but Tess detected a sliver of anxiety, of wanting—no, needing—to do right by Emily. Not to mess up.
Tess sighed. ‘Look, I know Emily’s been skipping Fontaine’s classes.’
‘She doesn’t need to speak French,’ Fifi jumped
