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The bottle of holy water

In an alcove in my mother's cottage, there's a little bottle of holy water. A white bottle from the Lourdes spring, shaped like the Mother of God. Her clasped hands are a white flame of prayer. Her blood is water and flows purely in her veins. She wears a blue screw-top for a crown. It always looks too heavy for her head. Holy Mary, Blessed Virgin, always has a headache.

After our disastrous morning in my mother's cottage, Monique and I go and stay at the farm.
"I need you like I need a hole in the head," I snap at her, when she comes into my room early one morning, before I'm even dressed. Mon Dieu; I can't help it; she's getting on my nerves. .
"Wear the fox-coloured cardigan," she pleads, as if I have nothing better to do than gratify her whims. And when I say no, she begins a litany of complaints.
"I don't like Francine. I don't want to share a room with her. She snores.
Why can't I sleep with you, like I used to do when I was little?"
"You're too big. I don't want to wake up in the night squashed right to the other side of the bed." The desperate embrace of Monique's nightmares is not an experience I care to repeat. Besides, I need my sleep.
Because I'm not sleeping very well at the moment. Albertine makes me cups of camomile tea to take up to bed, and gives me sage looks. Something's on her mind, I know, but she won't tell me. Just purses her lips and thinks.
But my migraines have returned. Night after night after night, the same relentless headache. Boring into my skull.
"Offer them up to the Virgin," Paul mutters at breakfast, through a mouthful of crumbs. I glare at him, then at Albertine. So she hasn't learnt to be discreet, after all. She has no right to tell him my private matters. I myself keep many things secret from my husband.
And what he is implying with the word Virgin'? I am a mother. I have obviously shared the fruits of conjugal love.
It's true, Monique and I have been here for nearly three months now, away from Stanley. And Paul and I never rubbed along particularly well. I give him my sweetest smile. A smile I learned from Albertine, when she wants her own way.
"That's a very good idea Paul. Supposing you drive us all to Mont-Saint-Michel? It would be good for Monique to see it before we leave."
Paul raises his head quickly from his croque-monsieur. There, the spoonful of sugar, thrown in at the end of

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