It turned out that a nine-year-old boy lived alone in an unheated apartment in southwestern France for two years after his mother abandoned him so she could live with her boyfriend.  The child was abandoned to his fate in a municipal apartment in Nersac, a village on the outskirts of Angouleme in Charente, after his mother moved in with her new partner three miles from home, French media reported.  The 39-year-old mother, who has not been identified, was sentenced last week to six months in prison for abandoning a minor and putting him in danger. The boy's father, who lived in another city, was not charged. The boy lived alone from 2020 to 2022, and during that time he had periods without hot water, heating or electricity, he washed with cold water and wrapped himself in sleeping bags and blankets to keep warm.  He was forced to steal tomatoes from a nearby balcony and collect food from neighbors, who eventually contacted the police, who took the boy into custody. Before he was found, neighbors expressed their concern to the boy's mother, who told them that she cared about her son and that they should stay out of her business, the Times reported.  According to local residents, his life of loneliness and abandonment went unnoticed, partly because the boy attended school, was clean and received good grades.  The mayor of the city, Barbara Couturier, told France Bleu that the boy did not lag behind his homework and was a "good student" despite the trials that befell him.  "I think it was also a kind of protection that he surrounded himself with to say, 'It's okay,'" she said.  She added that she didn't think anyone would have been able to discover what was really going on, given how well the boy looked after himself.  A classmate of the boy told TFI TV: "He told his friends that he ate alone and rode the bus alone. He didn't go out and stayed at home all the time."  The boy's mother reportedly insisted in court last week that she lived with her son, but this was said to have been refuted by mobile phone data obtained by police, which showed she was unlikely to have been in the apartment.  Neighbors spoke of their guilt for not understanding what was going on or not acting sooner, telling local media that the anonymity of modern life played a role in the neglect lasting so long.  "When there was a family and a village around the family, if the mother neglected the child, it didn't really matter, because the rest of the family and the whole village took care of the child. It doesn't happen like that anymore," said a local resident.