The English Understand Wool

Marguerite, a 17-year-old raised in a riad (a traditional Moroccan house with an interior courtyard) in Marrakech, narrates the story of her extraordinary upbringing and the revelation that the parents who raised her were her kidnappers. The narrative unfolds as a manuscript Marguerite is writing under a publishing contract, punctuated by e-mail exchanges with her editor that reveal the circumstances under which the book is being produced.

The story opens with Marguerite and her mother, whom she calls Maman, settling into a suite at Claridge's hotel in London. The television has been removed and replaced with an electronic piano with headphones, because Maman considers it mauvais ton (bad form) to inflict one's music on other guests yet refuses to forgo daily practice. They have traveled from Morocco to the Outer Hebrides, a remote Scottish archipelago, where Maman purchases an entire bolt of handloomed tweed to prevent it from "falling into ignoble hands." They are in London for six weeks so she can take the fabric to her English tailor on Savile Row.

Marguerite describes Maman's world in patient detail. Maman sources Irish linen but has garments made by Mlle Srisati, a gifted Thai seamstress she helped relocate from Bangkok to Paris, buying her an atelier with a showroom. Each year during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, the family leaves Morocco so fasting servants need not wait on them. The servants remain on full pay and receive generous gifts at Eid, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Over the years, Maman arranges for approximately 20 servants to advance into positions at grand hotels and distinguished households across Europe, personally providing recommendations.

Household life follows strict protocol. Meals are served formally; English is spoken when Marguerite's father, whom she calls Daddy, is present, French otherwise, so the staff become fluent in both languages. Marguerite's education is equally rigorous. Maman orders a Pleyel piano (Chopin's preferred instrument) and, finding no sufficiently distinguished instructor in Marrakech, buys a second riad, installs a Steinway, and brings a gifted graduate of the Paris Conservatoire, Mlle Sarian, for a six-month residency. Marguerite, around 10 years old, earns weekly lessons by preparing pieces to a standard the pianist deems acceptable, then practices four hours daily. A third riad is fitted with a sound studio to attract jazz musicians. She also learns bridge at seven and takes tennis lessons, acquiring the social skills Maman considers essential.

These pages are interrupted by e-mails from Bethany, Marguerite's editor at a New York publishing house. Bethany pushes Marguerite to discuss her feelings, suggests Maman seems cold, asks whether Marguerite ever suspected the woman was not her real mother, and urges her to consider a ghostwriter. Marguerite responds formally, saying she will write what she knows. A second e-mail complains of excessive backstory. Marguerite does not reply; instead, she goes to a bridge club, wins $1,300, and at a Park Avenue party sits at an unattended Steinway and plays Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, drawing guests and earning invitations. She reflects that these people would not have sought her company if she had been talking about her feelings rather than enlivening a dull party.

The narrative returns to the final evening at Claridge's. Over dinner, Maman delivers what amounts to a veiled farewell, discoursing on cultural forms of understanding and comparing national aptitudes to terroir, the way a particular soil and climate shape the grape. She shifts to a warning: When doing business with people who do not share the Arab understanding that trust matters more than documents, one must be very careful about what a piece of paper says. Marguerite promises to be careful.

In the morning, Maman is gone. Detective Inspector Braddock explains that Marguerite is an orphan: not because her parents have died, but because she was once an orphan with a fortune. At 20 months old, an infant named Marguerite disappeared from the home of Bernard and Marie-Thérèse Dessanges, the legal guardians appointed after her birth parents' deaths. Approximately 80 million euros held in trust also vanished, along with Marguerite's birth father's personal assistant, the man she knows as Daddy. Papers found in the riad support the identification, and DNA tests are pending. The Inspector shows photographs Marguerite cannot reconcile with the elegant couple who raised her.

Marguerite's concerns are practical. She confirms the Marrakech servants' salaries have been pre-funded and learns Maman had already paid the Savile Row tailor for two suits and a riding jacket. When police hold press conferences and journalists follow her in the street, she spends a week working through Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier as a guard against acting in bad form. She hires Bert, a New York literary agent, who insists she fly economy, stay at a Brooklyn bed-and-breakfast, and forgo a piano to cultivate public sympathy. The strategy works: An auction yields $2.2 million for North American rights. Because Marguerite is a minor, the Dessanges must cosign the contract. After Bert's commission, she receives $915,000, moves to the Ritz-Carlton, and begins writing.

The conflict with Bethany culminates at a lunch meeting. Bethany presses Marguerite to express emotions and invokes the contract's leverage: If the manuscript is unsatisfactory, the second installment will not be paid, and Marguerite may have to return the initial advance. Marguerite calmly calls Bert and her lawyer, Larry, from the table; both confirm these terms. Then she places her copy of the contract before Bethany and tells her to read it. Bert had sent the contract as a Word document. Marguerite, troubled by vague clauses that could compel intimate disclosures, amends the language to give the editor only a right of consultation and to make the advance payable regardless of publication. She prints, signs, and sends the amended copies, which passed through the Dessanges, Bert, the publisher's lawyer, and Bethany without anyone noticing the changes.

Bethany accuses Marguerite of doctoring the contract. Marguerite replies that people should not sign documents they have not read. She observes that the original contract demanded enormous trust from a 17-year-old betrayal victim in perfect strangers. Before Bethany storms out, Marguerite advises her to retain an independent lawyer before going to her company's counsel. A compromise is eventually reached: Bethany will wait the full six months until the delivery date, hoping the fugitives' capture might enrich the narrative. Marguerite agrees but reflects that capture is virtually impossible, given Maman's network of grateful beneficiaries across Europe and North Africa, her collection of burqas and chadors that could serve as disguises, and jewels that could be converted to funds.

The story closes with an omitted detail. On the day of Maman's disappearance, Marguerite found in her closet a three-quarter-length coat in pistachio shantung, a textured silk fabric, in a color suitable for both a blonde and someone with chestnut hair. She calls the Thai seamstress in Paris for an alteration. Mlle Srisati adapts the coat and then produces a parcel Maman left behind. It contains two gifts: pearl and diamond jewelry that belonged to Mme Despinasse, apparently Marguerite's birth mother or a relation, with a note conceding the woman was "not invariably devoid of taste"; and a bolt of handloomed tweed, with a note directing Marguerite to Peter Craven, Maman's Savile Row tailor: "The English understand wool."