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This is Lise Romain, except she doesn't like being called that. She doesn't like her stepfather at all, you see, and she much rather prefers her mother's first married name. Besides, Mademoiselle Mercier sounds much prettier. To be quite honest, she isn't that fond of her mother either; no, she likes Aunt Nicole and her grandparents much more.
Besides -- she looks too much like her father, and it disturbs her mother, which is a heavy burden to bear for a 14 year old girl. Her father and her older sister Irène died when Lise was six, and since then she hasn't been in a car a single time, which is quite rational. The accident marked her though, and she's been a bit strange ever since. She's quite obsessed with gothic stories, and she likes the scary movies and comics best. Death follows her around, almost.
That's not to say that she's entirely gloomy, though! She does her ballet class four times a week, and she did gymnastics with her cousin Jackie when they were little, before they moved to Toulon with mother and Georges. They still met up at family reunions, and write postcards sometimes, but then Jackie vanished, and Lise had her doubts.
(She didn't say a word to anyone, though, since Georges was very vocal about what ought to happen to rebels and resistants and he never did mind directing films for the Gestapo. It was scary, and she ought to have helped, but she was never as brave as the others, and she just wanted her classmates back, really.)
{Dernier family tree}
