The Lollipop Shoes (13 page)

I looked at Rosette again. She didn’t look tired at all, I thought. It was the mother who looked exhausted: pale and washed-out with her too-sharp haircut and her cheap black sweater that made her face seem paler still.

‘Are you all right?’ I said.

She nodded.

Above her, the single lightbulb began to flicker. These old houses, I thought to myself. The wiring’s always out of date.

‘Are you sure? You’re looking a little pale.’

‘Just a headache. I’ll manage.’

Familiar words. But I doubt she will; she clings to the child as if I might snatch her from her arms.

Might I, do you think? Twice married (though on neither occasion under my own name), and still I’ve never once thought of having a child. The complications are endless, so I’ve heard, and besides, in my line of work, the last thing I can afford is excess baggage.

And yet . . .

I drew the cactus sign of Xochipilli in the air, keeping my hand well out of view. Xochipilli the silver-tongued; the god of prophecy and dream. Not that I’m particularly interested in prophecies. But careless talk can bring rewards, so I have found, and information of any kind is currency for someone in my line of business.

The symbol gleamed and floated for a second or two, dispersing like a silvery smoke-ring in the dark air.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Well, to be honest, I hadn’t expected much of a result. But I was curious; and didn’t she owe me a little satisfaction, after all the effort I’ve made on her behalf?

So I made the sign again. Xochipilli the whisperer, unlocker of secrets, bringer of confidences. And this time, the result was beyond all my expectations.

First, I saw her colours flare. Just a little, but very bright, like a flame in the hearth as it encounters a pocket of gas. Almost at the same time, Rosette’s sunny mood altered abruptly. She arched back in her mother’s arms, throwing herself backwards with a whimper of protest. The flickering lightbulb popped with a sudden sharp report – and at the same time, a pyramid of biscuit tins fell over in the window display with a clatter fit to wake the dead.

Yanne Charbonneau was taken off-balance and she
took a step sideways, striking her hip against the counter.

There was a little open-fronted cabinet on the counter, which housed a collection of pretty glass dishes filled with sugared almonds in pink, gold, silver and white. It wobbled – instinctively Yanne reached out a hand to steady it – and one of the dishes fell to the floor.

‘
Rosette!
’ Yanne was almost in tears.

I heard the dish pulverize on impact, skittering bonbons across the terracotta tiles.

I heard it go, but did not look down; instead I watched Rosette and Yanne – the child aflame in her colours now, the mother so still she might as well have been stone.

‘Let me help.’ I bent down to scoop up the mess.

‘No, please—’

‘I’ve got it,’ I said.

I could feel the nervous tension in her, banked and ready to explode. It was surely not the loss of the dish – in my experience women like Yanne Charbonneau don’t go to pieces over a bit of broken glass. But the oddest things can trigger the blast: a bad day, a headache, the kindness of strangers.

And then I saw it from the corner of my eye, hunched beneath the counter-top.

It was a bright orange-gold, and clumsily drawn, but it was clear enough from the long curly tail and bright little eyes that it was supposed to be some kind of monkey. I turned abruptly to see it face-on, and it bared its pointed teeth at me before blinking back into empty air.

‘
Bam
,’ said Rosette.

There was a long, long silence.

I picked up the dish – it was blue Murano glass, delicately fluted at the edges. I’d heard it smash like the
sound of firecrackers going off; scattering shrapnel across the tiles. And yet here it was, unbroken in my hand. No accident.

Bam
, I thought.

Under my feet I could still feel the spilled bonbons grinding like teeth. And now Yanne Charbonneau was watching me in a fearful silence that spun and spun like a silk cocoon.

I could have said,
well, that was lucky
, or just put back the dish without a word, but it was now or never, I told myself.
Strike at once, while resistance is low. There may not be another chance.

And so I stood up, looked Yanne straight in the eyes and levelled at her all the charm that I could muster.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I know what you need.’

For a moment she stiffened and held my gaze, her expression all defiance and haughty incomprehension.

Then I took her arm, and smiled.

‘Hot chocolate,’ I told her gently. ‘Hot chocolate, to my special recipe. Chilli and nutmeg, with Armagnac and a dash of black pepper. Come on. No arguments. Bring the brat.’

Silently she followed me into the kitchen.

I was in.

P
ART
T
HREE

Two Rabbit

1

Wednesday, 14th November

I NEVER WANTED
to be a witch. Never even dreamed of it – though my mother swore she could hear me calling months before I appeared on the scene. I don’t remember that, of course. My early childhood was a blur of places, scents and people passing fast as trains; crossing borders without papers; travelling under different names; leaving cheap hotels at night; seeing the dawn in a new place every day, and running, always running, even then. As if the only way to survive was to run through every artery, vein, capillary on the map, leaving nothing – not even our shadows – behind.

You choose your family
, Mother said. My father had apparently not been chosen.

‘What would we need with him, Vianne? Fathers don’t count. It’s just you and me.’

Tell the truth, I didn’t miss him. How could I? I had nothing against which to measure his absence. I imagined him dark, and slightly sinister; a relative, perhaps, of the
Black Man we fled. And I loved my mother. I loved the world we had made for ourselves, a world we carried with us wherever we went; a world just out of reach of ordinary folk.

Because we’re special
, she would say. We saw things; we had the knack. You choose your family – and so we did, wherever we went. A sister here, a grandmother there; familiar faces of a scattered tribe. But as far as I could tell, there were no men in my mother’s life.

Except for the Black Man, of course.

Was my father the Black Man?
It gave me a start to hear Anouk come so close. I’d considered it myself, as we fled all shirt-tailed and carnival-coloured and ragged with the wind. The Black Man wasn’t real, of course. I came to think my father was the same.

Still, I was curious; and from time to time I would scan the crowds – in New York or Berlin, in Venice or Prague – hoping perhaps to see him there – a man, alone, with my dark eyes . . .

Meanwhile, we ran, my mother and I. First, it seemed for the sheer joy of running; then, like everything else, it became a habit, then a chore. In the end I began to think that running was the only thing that kept her alive as the cancer ran through her, blood, brain and bone.

It was then that she first mentioned the girl. Ramblings, I thought at the time, born of the painkillers she was taking. And she
did
ramble, as the end approached: told stories that made no sense at all; spoke of the Black Man; talked earnestly with people who weren’t there.

That little girl, with the name that so resembled mine, could have been another figment of those uncertain times – an archetype, an anima; a snippet from a newspaper;
some other little lost soul with dark hair and dark eyes, stolen away from outside a cigarette kiosk one rainy day in Paris.

Sylviane Caillou. Vanished as so many do; stolen from her car seat aged eighteen months, in front of a chemist’s near La Villette. Stolen away with her changing-bag and toys, last seen wearing a cheap silver baby bangle with a lucky charm – a little cat – dangling from the clasp.

That wasn’t me. It couldn’t have been. And even if it was, after all this time . . .

You choose your family
, Mother said. As I chose you and you chose me. That girl – she wouldn’t have cherished you. She wouldn’t have known how to care for you: how to slice the apple widthways to show the star inside, how to tie a medicine bag, how to banish demons by banging on a tin pan, how to sing the wind to sleep. She wouldn’t have taught you any of that—

And didn’t we do OK, Vianne? Didn’t I promise we’d be OK?

I have it still, that little cat charm. I don’t remember the baby bangle – probably she sold it or gave it away – but I half-remember the toys, a red plush elephant and a small brown bear, much-loved and missing an eye. And the charm is still there in my mother’s box, a cheap thing, such as a child might buy, tied with a piece of red ribbon. It’s there with her cards, and a few other things: a photograph of us taken when I was six, a stash of sandalwood, some newspaper clippings, a ring. A drawing I did at my first school – my only school – in the days when we were still going to settle down someday.

Of course I never wear it. I don’t even like to touch it now; there are too many secrets locked in there, like scent
that needs only human warmth to release it. As a rule I don’t touch anything in that box – and yet I don’t quite dare to throw it away. Too much ballast slows you down – but too little and I could blow away like a dandelion seed, losing myself for ever on the wind.

Zozie has been with me for four days now, and already her personality has begun to affect everything she touches. I don’t know how it happened – a temporary moment of weakness, perhaps. I certainly hadn’t intended to offer her a job. For a start, I can’t afford to pay her much, though she’s happy to wait until I can – and it seems so natural for her to be here, as if she has been with me all my life.

It began on the day of the Accident – the day she made the chocolate, and drank it with me in the kitchen, hot and sweet with fresh chillies and chocolate curls. Rosette drank some in her little mug, then played on the floor as I sat in silence – Zozie watching me with that smile, and her eyes all narrowed like a cat’s.

The circumstances were exceptional. On any other day, at any other time, I would have been better prepared. But on
that
day – with Thierry’s ring still in my pocket, and Rosette at her worst, and Anouk so quiet since she heard, and the long empty day stretching ahead—

At any other time, I would have held fast. But on that day—

It’s all right. I know what you need.

What, exactly? What does she know? That a dish that was broken came back whole? It’s too absurd; no one would believe it, still less that a four-year-old child had performed the trick, a four-year-old child who can’t even talk.

‘You look tired, Yanne,’ Zozie said. ‘Must be hard, looking after all this.’

Silently I nodded.

The memory of Rosette’s Accident sat between us like the last piece of cake at a party.

Don’t say it
, I told her silently, just as I’d tried to tell Thierry.
Don’t say it, please; don’t put it in words
.

I thought I felt her brief response. A sigh; a smile; a glimpse of something half-seen in shadow. A soft shuffle of cards, scented with sandalwood.

A silence.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said.

Zozie shrugged. ‘So drink your chocolate.’

‘You saw it, though.’

‘I see all sorts of things.’

‘Such as?’

‘I can see you’re tired.’

‘I don’t sleep well.’

She looked at me in silence for a time. Her eyes were all summer, freckled with gold.
I ought to know your favourites
, I thought, almost dreamily.
Perhaps I’ve simply lost the knack
. . .

‘Tell you what,’ she said at last. ‘Let me look after the shop for you. I was born in a shop – I know what to do. You take Rosette and have a lie-down. If I need you, I’ll shout. Go on. I’ll enjoy it.’

That was just four days ago. Neither of us has referred to that day since then. Rosette, of course, does not yet understand that in the real world, a broken dish must stay broken, however much we may wish it otherwise. And Zozie has made no effort to broach the subject again, and for that I am grateful. She knows that
something
happened, of course; but seems content to let it go.

‘What kind of a shop were you born in, Zozie?’

‘A bookshop. You know, the New Age kind.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘My mother was into that kind of thing. Shop-bought magic. Tarot cards. Selling incense and candles to blissed-out hippies with no money and bad hair.’

I smiled, though it made me a little uneasy.

‘But that was a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember much of it now.’

‘But do you still – believe?’ I said.

She smiled. ‘I believe we can make a difference.’

Silence.

‘And you?’

‘I used to,’ I said. ‘But not any more.’