Panic started to well up in the base of her stomach and rumbled upward, threatening to burst out into a scream.
What had she been thinking, leaving everything behind? How could this filthy town, this mat on the hard floor, ever replace what she had had in Paris?
She twisted the blanket in her hands, scowling at how bony her wrists were becoming. She needed to work. A job would make everything better. Once she had an income, she would be able to travel. She would be able to go out to restaurants and meet new people and one day she would have her child again.
She shivered, the hairs on her arms standing up and numbing her skin.
What had she been thinking? She knew Paris, had become an adult there, had seen its limestone façades and ancient palaces covered in snow, bathed in the summer sun, carpeted by fallen leaves... She had loved there, she had become a woman there, and now she was hunched in this rat-infested space shared with three other women, all of them struggling to pay the landlord.
The hard floorboards beneath her made her remember Félix's feather mattress. The scuffle of the rats climbing the inside of the walls were his footsteps when he came home, smelling of harsh soap and liquor and dusty tomes, sliding into bed and waking her with drunken kisses. The cold night air that pervaded this thin blanket was the tingling thrill when his lips brushed along her spine.
What had she been thinking when she left her city behind? Even without a home, even without her love, wouldn't Paris's winding streets have been enough?
She closed her eyes tightly against the darkness, unable to erase the symmetrical rows of windows from her mind.
Find work. Earn money. Retrieve Cosette. Once all of those had been accomplished, perhaps she would have time to look for love again.
It was too late to turn back now.