Charlotte hated me using her paints. The only time I got to use them was when I stole them out from under her, and that was when I was just a girl.
I got off my chair and stood back with the others. It wasn’t the kind of painting my sister would have liked; it was more modern, with boxes for faces, and colours that didn’t make sense.
Sister Mary-Francis carried my canvas away. ‘Now this,’ she said. ‘This is how you paint, girls.’
‘Is that a Picasso?’ someone said, and I burst out laughing, but after a second or two I realized I was the only one laughing. I thought it was ugly as sin and looked more like my thoughts, which were solely on Marguerite. Only Mavis thought it was as ugly as I did.
‘Get back to work, girls,’ I said, and they went back to their own canvases.
‘Adèle…’ Mavis whispered, pointing her brush to something over my shoulder, and when I turned around, I saw a few nuns not that far away, flashes of black as they walked the perimeter of the castle grounds, and one postulant. Marguerite. Mavis patted my shoulder, but this time I felt it.
I handed her my brushes. ‘I’ll be right back,’ I said, and I ran off through the field. Claire called after me, but Mavis must have gotten to her.
I followed them around a stone turret, trying to think of who the other nuns were with Marguerite. I didn’t recognize them, but they also had their headpieces on and it honestly could have been any one of the sisters at the convent. I practised how I’d say sorry.
‘Marguerite,’ I called out, just quietly enough for me to hear. ‘Do you have a moment?’ I thought that would be a good start and when she’d look at me with her dagger eyes, I’d offer her all the apologies I could muster. Maybe with the other sisters there it would break the tension. Maybe she won’t be so nasty. I hadn’t thought of that before, and skipped off a little faster, turning my head just once to see the girls behind me on the far hill painting, and then around the corner.
Only nobody was there.
I stood in the dirt, staring at an empty courtyard. ‘Where’d they go?’ I said out loud, and then threw my hands up. A deep breath followed. Getting all worked up and then having nowhere to go only made things worse. My stomach ached, and not the kind of ache I’d get from eating the sisters’ dinner soups. It was a nervous ache; one I couldn’t control no matter what I put in my mouth.
My head felt light from running, and I sat down on a wood bench next to a statue of a saint whose name I didn’t know, and lit a cigarette, where yellow flowers grew willy-nilly in between the cobblestones.
The clouds hid the sun in patches and cast handfuls of shady spots on the ground, a welcome relief from the heat that had roared through earlier in the week. After a few puffs, and suddenly having a few quiet moments to myself, it was easy to drift off and think about home, back at the chateau, in the Vichy hills of Creuzier-le-Vieux.
I thought about Charlotte and all those times we’d lain in the meadow behind Papa’s vineyard, gazing at the clouds with our hands tucked behind our heads like pillows. Papa’s wavy hair had started to grey, looking like flecks of salt and pepper. Wavy, where Charlotte’s was curly. And Mama, and her summer salads with herbs from the garden. If she were here, she’d tell me to stop looking at the clouds and start thinking about what I needed to do to make up with Marguerite.
Gérard.
I wanted to cry. If I didn’t find a way to reconcile with Marguerite, get her to stop watching me and forgive me, I’d find myself back on a train before I knew it. Lyon isn’t far enough away, I thought. I should have gone the other direction and all the way to Spain.
‘Adèle?’ a voice said.
I shot up—Mother Superior! I instantly snubbed out my cigarette, only to stop and hold the smashed little thing unwelcomely in my palm. I had broken one of the convent’s rules. There was no hiding that now. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. ‘Sorry, Mother.’ I hung my head down, slinking back onto the bench.
She picked up my lighter, which had fallen on the ground.