I toed the line as close to the edge as I dared. I argued and cursed and slammed my bedroom door more times than I could count, but I never broke my promise.

She knew every timetable by heart, every number in my phone. I had to text her as soon as I got out of class and again when I boarded the bus home. She stopped saying his name and channelled her grief into a tight-knit set of rules designed to control my every waking hour. While I struggled to fill the hole in my heart, Maman acted as if Papa had left us of his own accord. We fell apart in different ways over the next six years. I didn’t think about it again until after he was gone, when the concept of safety no longer existed and the notion that my mother might protect me against anything made me want to laugh and scream at the same time. I gave him my word so we could hurry up and go home. ‘Promise me you’ll keep each other safe.’Īn odd request, but Papa said strange things sometimes. ‘Sophie, promise me you’ll always mind your mother,’ he said. Let him take my hand and squeeze it hard. I did mean it, with a ten-year-old’s flair for the dramatic, but he sounded disappointed, so I said I was sorry.

‘Because it’s important we keep her happy.’ Best to leave your mother alone when she’s like this.’ Maman was in one of her moods, marching ahead like we didn’t even know each other. He tried to hold my hand on the way home, but I told him I was too old for that. We had lunch at a bistro by the opera house. Not that I knew something was going to happen to him. The day my father was murdered, I made him a promise.

Bloodlender by Zoé Perrenoud