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the table was set there were five of us in all. Besides Aunt Augustine and myself there was Ghislaine, a middle-aged woman who worked as a fish vendor, and two male boarders: Monsieur Roulin, a retired sailor; and Monsieur Bellot, a junior teacher at the boys’ lycée . Monsieur Roulin had a gap where his two front teeth should have been, his hair had retreated to a few wisps on the back of his sunspotted neck and his left forearm was missing, sliced off at the elbow joint. He waved the puckered end of his stump, speaking in a voice that sounded like an engine in need of oil. ‘It’s nice to have a young lady at the table. She is as dark as a berry, but pretty nonetheless.’
    I smiled politely, understanding from my position at the lower corner of the table, near the kitchen door, that I was a servant and should not put myself forward in the conversation.
    Monsieur Bellot pulled at his earlobe and said nothing beyond ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. During the meal, which Monsieur Roulin declared was the best they had eaten in months, Monsieur Bellot’s face changed from puzzled to dreamy to stern, as if he were carrying on some animated inner dialogue. Whatever Monsieur Roulin lacked, Monsieur Bellot seemed to have double in quantity: his teeth were long like a donkey’s, his hair was a wild halo around his head, and his limbs were so long that he didn’t need to stretch to pick up the water jug even when it was at my end of the table.
    Ghislaine was seated next to me. I was surprised that someone who worked at the fish markets could smell so clean. Her skin gave off the mild scent of a fresh peach and her hair smelt like the rich olive oil used in Marseilles soap. Her eyes crinkled into a smile when Monsieur Roulin caught me looking at his stump and cried out, ‘A shark as big as a cruise ship off the coast of Madagascar!’
    I sensed from the laughter and exchanged glances of the others at the table that the story wasn’t true. The angle of the amputation was too clean and had either been the result of an accident with a machine or surgery performed by a doctor. I hadn’t been looking at his stump with repugnance, just interest. The gnarled scar of my father’s eye had taught me that a warm heart was not changed by outer disfigurement.
    After I had washed the dishes Aunt Augustine set me to the other daily chores, including emptying the bucket upstairs with the lid on it into the lavatory in the courtyard. Then she ran her finger along the sideboard in the dining room and examined the streak of dust collected on the tip. ‘Dust from the ground floor up,’ she said, as if I were somehow to blame for the slovenly state of the house. ‘Do Monsieur Bellot’s room first, then sweep Ghislaine’s floor once she leaves for work. Monsieur Roulin’s room is cleaned by his daughter. Don’t worry about the fourth floor. She doesn’t want her things “interfered with”.’
    She? So I could put a sex to the mysterious being on the fourth floor, the mere mention of whom seemed to cause Aunt Augustine discomfort, although she didn’t mind taking her money for rent.
    ‘I rest in the afternoons but I’ll be back down to supervise supper,’ Aunt Augustine said, grabbing the banister and inching her way up the stairs.
    The kitchen floor was gritty under my feet when I went to fetch the broom. I cringed at the thought of cooking another meal in that unsanitary room. Despite Aunt Augustine’s instructions to start with the dusting, I cleaned the kitchen first. I filled a bucket with water and heated it over the stove, then scrubbed the table and benches with soapy water, trying to picture the secret guest upstairs as I worked. At first I imagined a shrivelled woman my aunt’s age, bedridden and with a hollow, ailing face. She was a former rival, either in love or gastronomy, who had fallen on bad times and Aunt Augustine was leaving her to languish in dirt and starvation. As I progressed to cleaningthe floor, the old