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safe.
    Find the toilets, comb her hair, compose herself, put the money in a safe place, decide where she is going to go, come up with a plan, this is what she needs to do. But before anything she has to smoke.
    She rips the plastic film off the carton; three packs fall to the ground. She picks them up, piles her jacket, the carton and the loose packs on top of her suitcase, all but the one she opens. She takes out a cigarette, lights it. A cloud of well-being fills her lungs. The first moment of happiness in an eternity. And then, almost immediately, it makes her head spin. She closes her eyes to gather her thoughts and a few moments later she feels better. Two or three minutes smoking a cigarette, like a calm after the storm. She keeps her eyes closed and inhales. When she has finished, she stubs out the cigarette, jams the carton into her suitcase and heads for the café that faces the platforms.
    On the mezzanine above her is Le Train Bleu with its sweeping double staircase and, behind the glass doors, the dining rooms, the dizzyingly high ceilings, the tables spread with crisp white linen, the bustle of the brasserie, the chink of silverware, the gilded mouldings and extravagant ceiling frescoes. Vincent took her here once upon a time, so long ago. All that seems so long ago.
    She notices a free table on the covered terrace. She orders a coffee, asks where the toilets are. She does not want to leave her suitcase here. But she can hardly take it with her to the ladies. She looks around. A woman is sitting to her right, another woman to her left. Women are more reliable when it comes to such things. The woman on the right is about her age, she is leafing througha magazine and smoking a cigarette. Sophie chooses the one on the left, who looks older, more settled, more confident; she nods to her suitcase, her expression unambiguous and yet she is not sure the woman has understood. But the woman’s face seems to say, “Go ahead, I’ll be right here.” A faint smile, the first in thousands of years. When it comes to smiles, too, women are better. She does not touch her coffee. She goes downstairs, resists the temptation to look at herself in the mirrors and immediately goes into a cubicle, locks the door, pulls down her jeans and her pants, sits down, her elbows on her knees, and sobs.
    *
    Coming out of the cubicle, she catches sight of her face in the mirror. Ravaged. She looks so old and worn out. She washes her hands, splashes water onto her face. She is so tired . . . She climbs back upstairs to drink her coffee, smoke a cigarette, think. No more panicking, she needs to be wary now, to think carefully. Easier said than done.
    When she comes to the terrace she instantly realises the magnitude of the disaster. Her suitcase is gone, as is the woman. “Shit!” she screams, and she bangs her fist on the table. The coffee cup falls and shatters on the ground, everyone is looking at her. She turns to the other woman, the one sitting on the right. From some imperceptible expression, from a slight, furtive glance, she knows that this woman saw what happened and did not intervene, did not say a word, did not lift a finger.
    “I don’t suppose you saw anything . . .”
    The woman is in her thirties, dressed from head to toe in grey. She has a mournful face. Sophie steps towards her, wiping tears from her face with her sleeve.
    ‘You didn’t see anything, did you, you fucking bitch!”
    Andshe slaps the woman. There are screams, the waiter rushes over, the woman brings a hand to her cheek and sobs wordlessly. Everyone comes running, what the hell is going on? Sophie is in the eye of the storm, people are milling about, the waiter takes hold of her arms and shouts: “Calm down right now or I’m calling the police.” She shrugs him off and runs, the waiter screams and runs after her, a group of bystanders follows them, ten metres, twenty, she has no idea which way to go, she feels the waiter’s imperious hand on her