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between us, from which we would occasionally cut a slice. Sometimes he brought a piece of rillettes wrapped in a sheet of waxed paper, or half a camembert. To our little feast, I would add a pocketful of strawberries or one of the goat’s cheeses rolled in ash that my mother called petits cendrés . From the Post I could see all my nets and traps, which I checked every hour, resetting them as necessary and removing the small fry.
    “What’ll you wish for when you catch her?” By now he believed implicitly that I would catch the old pike, and he spoke with a kind of reluctant awe.
    I considered. “Dunno.” I took a bite of bread and rillettes . “There’s no point making plans till I’ve caught it. That might take time.”
    It was time I was willing to take. Three weeks into June and my enthusiasm had not faltered. Quite the opposite. Even the indifference of Cassis and Reine-Claude only served to increase my stubbornness. Old Mother was a talisman in my mind, a slinking black talisman that, if I could only reach it, might put right everything which was skewed.
    I’d show them. The day I caught Old Mother they’d all look at me in amazement. Cassis, Reine—and to see that look in my mother’s face, to make her see me, perhaps to clench her fists in rage…. Or to smile with peculiar sweetness and open her arms….
    But here my fantasy stopped; I dared not imagine further.
    “’Sides,” I said with studied languor. “I don’t believe in wishes. I told you that already.”
    Paul looked cynical. “If you don’t believe in wishes,” he pointed out, “then what’re you doing it for at all?”
    I shook my head. “Dunno,” I said at last. “Just for something to do, I expect.”
    He laughed. “That’s you, Boise,” he said between gusts of laughter. “That’s you all over, that is. Catch Old Mother for something to do!” And he was off again, rolling alarmingly close to the edge of the platform in his incomprehensible hilarity until Malabar, tied with string at the foot of the tree, began to bark sharply and we fell silent before our cover was blown.

5.
    S oon after that, I found the lipstick under Reine-Claude’s mattress. A stupid place to hide it, really—anyone could have found it, even Mother—but Reinette was never imaginative. It was my turn to make the beds, and the thing must have worked its way under the bottom sheet, because that was where I found it, tucked between the lip of the mattress and the bedboard. At first I didn’t recognize it. Mother never used makeup. A small golden cylinder, like a stubby pen. I turned the cap, encountered resistance, opened. I was experimenting rather gingerly on my arm when I heard a gasp behind me and Reinette jerked me round. Her face was pale and contorted.
    “Give me that!” she hissed. “That’s mine!” She snatched the lipstick from my fingers and it fell to the floor, rolling under the bed. Quickly she scrabbled to retrieve it, her face flaring.
    “Where did you get that?” I asked curiously. “Does Mother know you’ve got it?”
    None of your business,” gasped Reinette, emerging from under the bed. “You’ve no right to go snooping in my private things. And if you dare tell anyone —”
    I grinned. “I might tell,” I told her. “And I might not. It just depends.” She took a step forward, but I was almost as tall as she was, and though rage had made her reckless, she knew better than to try to fight me.
    “Don’t tell,” she said in a wheedling voice. “I’ll go fishing with you this afternoon, if you like. We could go to the Lookout Post and read magazines.”
    I shrugged. “Maybe. Where did you get it?”
    Reinette looked at me. “Promise you won’t tell.”
    “I promise.” I spat in my hand. After a moment’s hesitation she followed suit. We sealed the bargain with a spit-clammy handshake.
    “All right.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, legs curled underneath her. “It was at school. In spring. We had a