37
"Éponine," Éléonore said, her voice calm and smooth, "Why don't you go and speak to her and see if she's all right? Bring her in here when she's ready."
Éponine nodded, and after a brief moment of hesitation as she exchanged speculative stares with Inès' mother, she followed Inès down the corridor. The smaller girl had run out of view, but she could hear her footsteps thudding loudly somewhere in the distance. She followed the sound of them, but then she was in the lobby and she couldn't hear them anymore so she assumed that Inès had gone outside.
She opened the door and stepped out onto the street. Inès hadn't gone far. She was huddled next to the door, her back against the wall and her face pressed into her knees. Her arms were looped around her legs, and her shoulders were shaking.
Éponine hovered next to her, then cleared her throat and stepped so that she was stood in front of Inès. She crouched in front of her. "Inès?"
"Go away," the girl snapped, her voice thick and muffled.
"Éléonore sent me," Éponine said.
"I don't care who sent you, I just want you to leave!" Inès shouted, raising her head. Her face was bright and shiny wet with tears.
"That's not going to happen," Éponine muttered, internally reflecting on what ugly faces Inès pulled when she was crying. "Éléonore says you're to come back to the office when you feel ready."
"I don't want to see her," Inès said immediately.
"Your mother?" Éponine guessed, and this prompted an odd, strangled wail from Inès.
"Yes," she gasped. "I don't want to see her!"
"Do you mind if I ask why?" Éponine braced her hands behind her back so that she could sit, cross-legged, on the ground.
"She obviously doesn't care about me," Inès spat. "Any of us. I have so many brothers and sisters and – and we all went our separate ways and she never cared enough to make sure we all stayed together! Look where it got me!" She flung her hands up in the air. "Dead at thirteen. I hate her!"
"They're all here, now, though," Éponine said. "I'm not actually sure that they're your siblings, but it'd be a good guess, don't you think?"
Inès shook her head and dragged a hand over her nose and mouth, producing a wet sound that turned Éponine's stomach. She wrinkled her nose.
"I don't want to see any of them," Inès declared, but it sounded weak.
"I understand the fact that you don't – you know, you don't necessarily want to see them, but if I were you, I would want some answers," Éponine said, patting Inès on the knee.
"Answers? About what?" Inès sniffled.
"What they're doing here, for a start," Éponine said. "How they found each other, maybe? And then…then you can do what you want. To be honest, I've only been asked to bring you back to Éléonore's office, so what you do after we've spoken to your mother is entirely up to you."
Inès sniffed again, and the resulting sound had Éponine closing her eyes and looking in the other direction. Some people, she decided, should just not be allowed to cry in public, especially in Éponine's presence. She decided she would avoid a crying Inès in future as it was not an attractive spectacle.
"I've been on my own for so long," Inès murmured.
Éponine looked at her. "You haven't," she said. "That woman you live with..."
Something like a smile broke out on Inès' face, but it faltered very quickly. "It's not the same thing," she muttered.
"You're under no obligation to have anything to do with them if you choose not to," Éponine sighed. "If that's what you're worried about – being pressured into seeing them all the time. Just because they're your family doesn't mean you have to see them. You've made your own family here, in your own little way, and they have no right to come in and disturb it."
She allowed herself to wonder what would happen if her parents died and turned up here, trying to see her. She didn't think she'd want anything to do with them – she had Gavroche, and Combeferre, and even Enjolras, and then there was all of the other students who treated her like a friend. She was happier here with them than she'd ever been with her parents, and what's more – she knew, knew, that if they died and turned up in this second, she would walk away from them.
Inès let out a small, shaky breath and flexed her hands. "I only have to talk to her once," she said. "Get answers."
"Yes, that's the way I see it," Éponine said, getting to her feet. Her shawl slipped away from her shoulders as she moved and she reached down to halt its descent to the pavement.
After a few more moments, Inès also stood up, but she took her time about it, dragging her feet and clinging to the wall behind her. The more Éponine observed of Inès the more similarities she was starting to see between her and her loud, bickering siblings; she wondered if a penchant for dramatics ran in the family as well.
Once Inès was steady on her feet, she turned to stare at the doors with some trepidation. Éponine pulled a face and walked around her, hefting the door open and slipping back inside the building.
Inès continued to drag her feet the entire walk to Éléonore's office. A part of Éponine wanted to turn around and command the other girl to speed up, but she had half a suspicion that would just tip Inès over the edge again and result in her curling up in the middle of the corridor.
Instead, she stormed ahead with long strides, occasionally glancing over her shoulder and slowing a little so that Inès could catch up. They got to Éléonore's office and she knocked on the door this time and waited for a response before opening the door.
Éléonore was crouched in front of the armchair that the elderly lady was sat on, and the elderly lady was crying, a handkerchief balled in her fist. Éléonore looked in Éponine's direction as she entered, but her eyes were really looking past her. Éponine guessed she was looking at Inès, and glanced down to see that Inès was peering around her, apprehension written clear all over her flushed face.
"Come in, sit down," Éléonore urged, standing up with a rustle of fabric. She linked her long white hands together and walked back around her desk. "Éponine, if you could shut the door behind you, please."
Two more armchairs were positioned in front of the desk, but facing each other. Inès sank into the one nearest to Éléonore's desk, perched right on the edge; Éponine sat in the other free one, leaning back into the cushions.
For a few moments, a heavy, awkward silence hung over the room. Éléonore cleared her throat. "This is – this is a very unusual situation," she said. "I've never actually had anything like this occur before, and if I'm being completely honest, I'm not entirely certain how to proceed…"
"Maybe," Éponine spoke up quietly, "It would be best if we let them talk to each other."
Inès whipped her head around, alarmed. "I'm not being left alone with her!"
The elderly lady's eyes widened and she let out a small, indignant noise. "Inès, I am your mother," she said.
"I've not seen you since I was ten," Inès said. "And I died when I was thirteen, so I hadn't seen you for three whole years before I died. You didn't care what happened to me in that space of time –"
"Don't you dare," the elderly lady said in a vicious voice. "You don't know what it was like for me, watching all of my children bar one slowly disappear –"
"And how do you think we all felt?" Inès snapped back, voice just as caustic. "We were children."
"I have done everything to reunite us since I died," the elderly lady said. "I have wandered from place to place, through all the different barriers, hunting down my children. I have been so fortunate to find all of them, but my family is not complete –"
"What, and you need me to complete it?" Inès snorted.
"You, and another brother – and others," the elderly lady said. "Please, Inès. I wish I had found you earlier – you must have been here longer than I anyway, I just didn't realise…"
"How did you not realise when you managed to find the rest of them?" Inès said. "You must have had a way of finding them."
"I did, Inès, but you were not so easy to find," the elderly lady said. "Every time I tried to draw a Portal to see where you were...You were so hard to see but – I suppose that makes sense, you were always the most independent child of mine. I used to despair," she continued, dabbing the handkerchief on her eyes. "Every time you used to go wandering off…No one could get through to you, only your uncle…It seems fitting that you remained difficult to find…"
"I've never forgiven you," Inès said. "You weren't a good mother."
"I'm trying to be a good mother," the elderly lady said. "I know I could have done more, to keep us all together, but…"
Inès shook her head. "It's more than could have," she said, quietly. "You should have, because that's what mother's do. The woman I live with now – she would have done anything for her child – and she'd do anything for me and I'm not even her daughter! All you cared about was little Pierre, little perfect Pierre!"
The lady's eyes flashed in warning. "Inès," she said, "Do not talk about your brother like that."
"Oh, you made sure that Pierre stayed with you," Inès snarled, rolling her eyes.
"He was a child," the elderly lady said.
"We were all children!" Inès shouted, as the door creaked open.
"Good old Inès," Arnaud snorted, popping his head around the door. "Always liked to throw temper tantrums –"
"Arnaud, now is not the time!" the elderly lady snapped.
"I think that tensions may be running a little too high," Éléonore cut in.
"If this is a family meeting, why is she here?" Arnaud jabbed a finger in Éponine's direction.
Éponine threw her hands up. "I was told to come here!"
"I don't have to talk to any of you," Inès said, getting to her feet. "You're – you're not my family anymore, not any of you. Éléonore –"
"You may take the rest of the day off," Éléonore said smoothly. "I'll come round later to see you."
Inès gave Éléonore a little nod and then turned towards Éponine. She mouthed a 'thank you' and then shoved past her brother and disappeared.
"She hates me," the elderly lady said in a watery voice.
"We all hated you," Arnaud said unhelpfully, still hovering in the doorway.
The elderly lady's face went very white. "I tried," she said. "I tried my best to make sure that you were all looked after and my best wasn't good enough, but I am trying so hard now to reunite us all so we can be a proper family again."
"Yes, I know that," Arnaud said, some semblance of patience in his voice, "But Inès was always prickly."
"She's had a tough life," Éponine spoke up.
"We've all had tough lives," Arnaud said, with a roll of his eyes. "Anyway, I came to say that Gabrielle and Daniel had a fight and Gabrielle made him cry."
The elderly lady closed her eyes. "You all act like children."
"We're dead for eternity," Arnaud said. "Why not act like children?" Then he wandered off down the corridor, leaving the door stood open.
Éponine cleared her throat. "Maybe I should just –"
"No, please, stay," the elderly lady said. "I – I just wanted to thank you. I know Inès hates me, but you have managed to reunite me with her. It was so difficult to find her, you see, and I never imagined it would happen this fast."
"It's nothing," Éponine said. "Honestly, I'm not even sure how I managed it."
"I have met lots of people like you," the elderly lady said. "Who can do what you do..."
"Éponine is still not fully clear on that," Éléonore cut in. "She is seeing an expert soon, and I think she should wait for that first before discussing it with you."
It was a clear warning, and the elderly lady looked a little surprised by Éléonore's somewhat sharp tone. Éléonore wasn't watching the lady, though, she was watching Éponine, and after a few minutes she said, "Éponine, I think maybe you should leave now. There are some things that myself and Jeanne need to discuss."
And that was a clear dismissal. Éponine was glad to flee the room and its awkward, heavy tension, and her feet could not move fast enough.