I peek at the fancy couple Jonas is talking with. They remind me of another beautiful couple that attended our Monday’s performance, and something I noticed then comes back to me. They seemed to know Jonas. Unlike with these two, whom he acknowledged from the beginning, he’d acted like he didn’t know them at first. But then all three disappeared during the intermission. When Jonas returned for act 3, without the couple, he looked so pissed off that Sandra told him to snap out of it. To his credit, he did so at once.
I wonder what they’d said to him…
Finally, the couple takes their leave, and Jonas rushes to Giselle’s side.
I can’t watch this any longer. Feeling betrayed and mad at myself over my exaggerated, unreasonable reaction, I rush to the costume shop, change into my regular clothes, and leg it upstairs to my room.
I hate you, Jonas d’Alenq!
CHAPTER25
MARGOT
It’s nine o’clock and everyone reconvenes in the third-floor bar to celebrate the end of the pilot season and to thank Jonas. Next weekend, Sandra is throwing a proper party at her place, but because we don’t know yet if Jonas will be there, the idea was to make sure everybody had a chance to thank him, Mrs. Everly, and Oli before we break camp tomorrow morning.
I half expect Jonas to walk in with Giselle on his arm, but he turns up alone. Over the next half hour, he doesn’t say a word to me or spare me a single look. His coldness hurts. I end up in such a foul mood that I use a stomachache as a pretext and bow out.
The anger and pain don’t let up once I’m alone in my room. I try to read. It doesn’t help. Mom and Dad call me. I talk to them, hoping that my fake cheer will become real, but that doesn’t happen either.
When we hang up, I hear a noise in Jonas’s room. He’s in there! He must’ve left shortly after me.
Should I go over and confront him?But on what grounds? All I come up with is: “You, Sir, had a one-night stand with me. But you didn’t make it sufficiently clear that it was a one-night stand, and now you’re hitting on another woman. How dare you! It’s against the rules to rescue a woman, make love to her all night, and lose interest in her the following day.”
Hmm, there has to be a less pathetic angle.
I could simply ask him to be honest with me, citing his self-professed life philosophy. I could tell him, “Be that strong man you claim you are and tell me where we stand. Don’t worry, I can handle it.”
Yep, that’s what I’ll do.
Determination in my step, I head out into the hallway. When I knock on Jonas’s door, no one answers at first. Then, when I’m about to admit defeat, I hear a patter of light steps approaching the door. It opens. Instead of Jonas, I’m greeted by a boy of about seven or eight.
He sizes me up. “Hello.”
The resemblance with Jonas is so striking I know at once who he is.
“Hi, there,” I say.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Margot.” I narrow my eyes demonstratively. “How did you get here, young man, and what did you do to Jonas?”
“Aunt Celeste brought me here,” he replies.
While Jonas speaks a very BBC English, Matteo’s pronunciation is more international with a touch of French and closer to my mother’s accent than to my dad’s. The kind of accent you’d expect from a bilingual Monegasque kid.
“Where is your aunt now?” I ask.
“She went to the kitchen to get me some cookies and chocolate milk. Can you help me? I’m stuck.”
I step in and follow him to an unfinished jigsaw puzzle spread out over the rug. It’s an incomplete picture of a tree with majestic branches reaching out to the cloudy sky. Matteo scurries around the rug picking up the scattered pieces.
He lines them up neatly in front of me and pulls a face. “Nothing fits.”
We both sit down cross-legged and stare at the unfinished tree. I take my time to observe the shape of the hole in it and each of the pieces he laid out for me.
I place my first likely match.Nope, wrong.I try another one, and then a few more, even the unlikely ones. Matteo is right—nothing fits.
Turning to him, I say reassuringly, “Don’t worry, Matteo, we’ll figure it out.”
