“You want to hear about the inn, no?”
Eponine settles onto the chair, curling up her legs.
“It don’t make me sad though. It doesn’t bother me so much.” She smiles.
“”Our inn were in this small village - Montfermiel - just outside Paris. It were big. The Duke of Waterloo, she was, and all through everything Pa wouldn’t get rid of that stupid sign. Even when we were freezing - I don’t mean cold, I mean we were freezing to death, when you wake with even your nose filled with ice, never that to burn and never Monsieur Bonaparte. We carried ‘em everywhere. My Pa sold my brothers before he’d sell the pictures.”

He sold Eponine too, sold her out enough times that she lost count anyway. But that story isn’t this one.
She takes a deep breath.

“Me and ‘Zelma shared a room. We had a bed each and when Gavroche were born, his cradle in there also. Out front were a swing and I had a doll, such a beautiful doll, and clothes for it. Sometimes I let Azelma play but she’s stupid to. I had a cat too, Antoinette, what I’d dress in my dolly clothes.”

She smiles dreamily. “Such a lovely time. We had a servant too. She were Cosette, a child like me. She were perhaps a year older but not much, but stupid. Mama’s have me watch her, and I would tell Ma when the last thing stopped working or were playing or stealing a glass of water or a potato peel, and my Ma’d wallop her. It were funny to hear her scream and beg and that. Stupid child, and she’d cry, which’s make Pa threaten his belt. Idiot. I dunno if she took it but it bloody hurts your arse when the buckle hits. Back then it were funny to see her hit, but when she were taken away by that old man, it were me getting the belt and that were not so much.”

She bites the inside of her lip ruefully.
“I had wanted a doll - a beautiful doll with brown curls and green eyes and a rosebud mouth and such a dress. Pa said for Christmas but Cosette were given it by the man. I made such a fuss that he gave me the belt on my hands. I were seeing stars, I swear. It hurt so much. That were the last Christmas and all because… well I don’t know what happened to the inn. I don’t know, but people stopped coming, and the guards looked for Pa, because even then did we fleece people. Me, I’d pick through their cases and take the good stuff. Anyway, we were out of the inn with a cart full of stuff and Maurice our horse, and onto the cart go Mama and Azelma and Gavroche, but me and Pa, we much walk walk walk to Paris. Such walking. My feet ached and I cried for the way… but Pa were handy with his hands and soon my arse hurt too much to think of my feet.”

Eponine shrugs. “Is that what you like?”
She sounds curiously detached from her story. Eponine the obnoxious child doesn’t feel at all like Eponine the woman, and until she gets to the part about going to Paris, it feels almost like she’s remembering a story, not her life.

“There were good times though. I were Mama’s favourite, I remember, and Pa’s. I had all I wanted. Pretty dresses, a bed, dolls… mama taught me reading and letters and a fair hand, and my Papa taught me numbers and bills. It were a novelty to have me charge the guests and it made it well to add errors and blame my youth if they noticed. And to a child, a pretty child like me, they’d tip more. That is what I miss, you know? I could have been pretty. I am clever. I could have been a fine person… but life is not so. I became a gamine - that is a street girl - married to a man what holds his knife to my throat to make me comply, and running from him and my Pa and left to die either murdered or starved in the alleys of Paris. Everyone cared for me in Montfermiel. Now, and in Paris, no matter how I scream and fuss to be heard, nobody never listens or cares.”

She breaks off her narrative with a smile at Martin. “But you care, no? You’ll listen even to a gamine like me?”