Part 3

Dear Rachel,

The letter was accompanied by a few photocopied photographs. The smirking boy with the long, dark curls and a lazy stubble, glass in hand with an arm around his mother, and another pulling his reluctant sister into shot. A teenager wearing a slightly old fashioned shirt, visibly smaller than the friends who surrounded him as he posed with a birthday cake. Illness had coloured his skin lighter than his hair, but Sophia wrote in an excited scrawl of how her most vulnerable child was back at school.

***

With their hunger satisfied, the children ran off to play, leaving the adults to their coffee.

"Is everything going well at work, Pierre?" Rachel asked politely. He looked awkward now the kids were gone, as if the two women were the couple, and not him and his wife. Sophia had confided in Rachel long ago, when they spent hours in a shared flat, joking about Sophia's obsession with the French and Rachel's childish ways. The sweet English girl had listened with awe to Sophia's exaggerated stories of her dear, beloved Claude, the young, mild academic studying in Milan who had brought her to this foreign country, before being cruelly and dramatically taken at the height of their romance. So when, by odd coincidence, Sophia found herself the object of another Frenchman's affection, Rachel had of course teased. But this was different. Pierre was no Claude, but he was good, and intelligent and oh so very handsome. He made a wonderful father, and he and Sophia were good friends.

"Yes, things are good. We bought a new car recently." He was monotonous, almost sounding bored. He countered this by holding Sophia's hand and glancing into her eyes, kissing her lightly on the lips. There was no doubt who was the outsider in the trio now, and once again she felt a sick weight in her stomach. She glanced over to the play area for a distraction, but hearing Rene's broken, playful French made her feel even worse.

This wasn't right. Sophia, Pierre, the children, the house, the car... All brought on a deep, lingering sickness, which distracted Miss Mason as she stood before her class the next day, and consumed her mind as she ate alone in the staffroom at lunchtime. And as the sadness, the injustice, the indignation slowly grew, never once were Miss Mason's unhealthy feelings tinged with the slightest guilt.