The Lollipop Shoes (57 page)

‘She taught me how to read palms,’ I said. ‘And Tarot cards, and tea-leaves, and runes. I’ve still got her pack in a box upstairs. I don’t use it much, and it isn’t quite proof, but it’s everything I have left of her—’

She was staring at me now, lips parted, mouth drawn in a grimace of some emotion too complex to identify.

‘She said you wouldn’t have cared for me. She said you wouldn’t have known what to do. But she saved the charm with her Tarot cards, and she saved the newspaper clippings, and before she died, I think she meant to tell me, but I couldn’t quite believe it then – I didn’t
want
to believe it then.’

‘There was a song I used to sing. A lullaby. Do you remember?’

For a moment I paused. I was eighteen months old. How could I remember such a thing?

Then suddenly it came to me. The lullaby we always sang to turn aside the changing wind; the song that soothes the Kindly Ones—

‘V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent,

V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’appelle.

V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent,

V’là l’bon vent, ma mie m’attend.’

And now she opened her mouth and wailed, a great, torn hopeful cry that cut through the air like beating wings. ‘That was it. Oh, that was—’ Her voice wavered helplessly and she fell towards me, arms open like a drowning child.

I caught her – she would have fallen otherwise – and the scent of her was like old violets and clothes kept too long unworn, like mothballs and toothpaste and powder and dust; so absurdly unlike the familiar sandalwood scent of my mother that it was all I could do to hold back the tears—

‘’Viane,’ she said. ‘My ’Viane.’

And I held her, just as I’d held my mother in the days and weeks before her death, with quiet words of reassurance that she did not hear, but that calmed her a little, and finally she began to sob, with the long exhausted sobs of someone who has seen more than their eyes can bear, felt more than their heart can withstand—

Patiently I let them subside. A minute later those tearing sounds in her chest had settled into a series of low tremors, and her face, ravaged now by the flow of tears, turned to look at the circle of guests. For a long time, no one moved. Some things are just too much to take; and this woman in her naked grief made them shy away like children from some fierce animal dying in the road.

No one offered a handkerchief.

No one looked her in the eye.

No one spoke.

Then, and to my astonishment, Madame Luzeron got to her feet and spoke up in her cut-glass voice. ‘My poor dear. I know how you feel.’

‘You do?’ Madame’s eyes were a mosaic of tears.

‘Well, I lost my son, you know.’ She put her hand on Madame’s shoulder and guided her to an armchair nearby. ‘You’ve had a shock. Have some champagne. My late husband always used to say that champagne was largely medicinal.’

Madame gave a wavering smile. ‘You’re very kind, Madame—’

‘Héloïse. And you?’

‘Michèle.’

So that was my mother’s name. Michèle.

At least I can still be ’Viane
, I thought, and now I began to shake so violently that I almost collapsed into my chair.

‘You OK?’ said Nico, concerned.

I nodded, trying to smile.

‘You look like you could do with something medicinal yourself,’ he said, handing me a glass of cognac. He looked so earnest – and so incongruous – in his Henri IV wig and frogged silk coat that I started to cry – absurd, I know – and for a time I quite forgot the little scene that Michèle’s story had interrupted.

But Thierry had not forgotten it. Drunk he might have been, but not drunk enough to forget why he had followed Roux here. He’d come in search of Vianne Rocher, and he’d found her at last, perhaps not as he’d imagined her, but here, and with the enemy—

‘So
you’re
Vianne Rocher.’ His voice was flat. His eyes were pinpricks in red dough.

I nodded. ‘I was. But I’m not the person who cashed those cheques—’

He cut me off. ‘I don’t care about that. What matters is you lied to me.
Lied
. To
me
.’ Angrily he shook his head, but there was something pitiable in the gesture, as if he couldn’t quite believe that, once again, Life had failed to live up to his exacting standards of perfection.

‘I was willing to marry you.’ Now his voice was slurred with self-pity. ‘I would have given you a home, you and your kids. Another man’s kids. One of them –
well
– I mean,
look
at her.’ He glanced at Rosette in her monkey suit, and the familiar rictus came over his face. ‘Look at her,’ he said again. ‘She’s practically an animal. Crawls on all fours. Can’t even speak. But I would have taken care of her – I would have got the best specialists in Europe on her case. For your sake, Yanne. Because I loved you.’

‘
Loved
her?’ said Roux.

Everybody turned to look.

He was leaning against the kitchen door, hands in his pockets, eyes bright. He had unzipped his Santa suit and beneath it he was all in black, and the colours reminded me so much of the Pied Piper on the Tarot card that suddenly I could hardly breathe. And now he was speaking, in that fierce, harsh voice; Roux, who hates crowds, avoids scenes where he can, and never,
ever
makes a speech—

‘Love her?’ he said. ‘You don’t even know her. Her favourite chocolates are
mendiants
; her favourite colour is bright red. Her favourite scent is mimosa. She can swim like a fish. She hates black shoes. She loves the sea. She’s got a scar on her left hip from when she fell out of a Polish goods train. She doesn’t like having curly hair, even
though it’s gorgeous. She likes the Beatles, but not the Stones. She used to steal menus from restaurants because she could never afford to eat there herself. She’s the best mother I’ve ever met—’ He paused. ‘And she doesn’t need your charity. As for Rosette . . .’ He picked her up and held her so that her face was almost touching his own. ‘She’s my little girl. And she’s perfect.’

For a moment Thierry looked puzzled. Then realization began to set in. His face darkened; his eyes went from Roux to Rosette, from Rosette to Roux. The truth is undeniable; Rosette’s face may be less angular, her hair a lighter shade of red, but she has his eyes, and his satirical mouth, and at that moment there could be no mistake—

Thierry turned on his polished heel, a crisp manoeuvre slightly marred by the fact that he struck the table with his hip, sending a champagne glass to smash to the floor, scattering across the tiles in an explosion of fake diamonds. But when Madame Luzeron picked it up—

‘Hey, that’s lucky,’ said Nico. ‘I could have sworn I heard it go—’

Madame gave me a curious look.

‘Just lucky, I guess.’

Just like the blue glass dish again, the Murano dish I dropped that day, but now I’m not afraid any more. I just looked at Rosette in her father’s arms, and what I felt was not dismay, or fear, or anxiety, but an overwhelming sense of pride—

‘Well, you’d better enjoy it while you can.’ Thierry was standing by the door, massive in his red suit. ‘Because as of now, I’m giving you notice. A quarter’s notice, as per our deal, after which I’m closing you down.’ He eyed me with malign good cheer. ‘What, did you think you were
going to stay, after everything that’s happened here? I own this place, in case you’d forgotten, and I’ve got plans that don’t include you. Have fun with your little chocolate shop. You’ll all be gone by Easter.’

Well, that’s not the first time someone’s said that. As the door slammed behind him I felt, not fear, but another astonishing lurch of pride. The worst had happened, and we had survived. The changing wind had won again, but this time I felt no sense of defeat. Instead I felt delirious; ready to face down the Furies themselves—

And then I had a terrible thought. I stood up abruptly, scanned the room. Conversation was starting again, slowly at first, but gaining momentum. Madame Luzeron poured champagne. Nico began to talk to Michèle. Paupaul was flirting with Madame Pinot. From what I could hear, the general consensus was that Thierry was drunk, that all of his threats were empty talk, that by next week it would all be forgotten, because the
chocolaterie
was a
part
of Montmartre, and could no more disappear than Le P’tit Pinson—

But someone was missing. Zozie was gone.

Nor was there any sign of Anouk.

14

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.15 p.m
.

IT’S BEEN SO
long since I last saw Pantoufle. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to have him nearby, watching me with his berry-black eyes, or sitting all warm on my knee, or on my pillow late at night in case I get scared of the Black Man. But Zozie’s already at the door, and we have to catch that Changing Wind—

I call Pantoufle in my shadow-voice. I can’t just leave without Pantoufle. But he doesn’t come, just sits by the stove with his whiskers twitching and that look he gets, and it’s funny, but I can’t remember ever being able to see him so clearly, every hair, every whisker etched in light. And there’s a scent of something, too, coming from that little pan—

It’s only chocolate, I tell myself.

But it smells different, somehow. Like the chocolate I used to drink as a child, all creamy and hot with chocolate curls and cinnamon and a sugar spoon to stir it with.

‘Well?’ she says. ‘Are you coming or not?’

Once again, I call Pantoufle. But once again he doesn’t hear. And of course I want to go, to see those places she told me about, to ride the wind, to be fabulous – but there’s Pantoufle sitting by the copper pan, and somehow I just can’t turn away.

I know he’s just an imaginary friend, and here’s Zozie, so real and alive, but there’s something I have to remember somehow, a story Maman used to tell about a boy who gave his shadow away—

‘Come
on
, Anouk.’ Her voice is sharp. The wind feels cold in the kitchen now, and there’s snow on the step and on her shoes. Inside the shop there’s a sudden noise, I can smell the chocolate and hear Maman calling me—

But now Zozie’s taking my hand, and she’s dragging me through the open back door. I can feel the snow sliding under my shoes, and the cold of the night creeps under my cloak—

Pantoufle!
I call for the last time.

And finally he comes to me, shadowy across the snow. And for a second I see her face, not through the Smoking Mirror, but through the shadow of Pantoufle – and it’s a stranger’s face, not Zozie’s at all, but twisted and bent like a handful of scrap metal, and old,
old
, like the oldest great-great-grandmother in the world, and instead of the red dress like Maman’s, she’s wearing a skirt of human hearts, and her shoes are all blood in the drifting snow—

I scream and try to pull away.

She claws at me with the sign of One Jaguar, and I can hear her telling me that we’re going to be fine, not to be afraid, that she’s chosen me, that she wants me, needs me, that none of the others would understand—

And I know I can’t stop her. I have to go. I’ve gone too far, my magic’s nothing next to hers – but the scent of chocolate is still so strong, like the scent of a forest after the rain, and suddenly I can see something else, a hazy picture in my mind. I can see a little girl, only a few years younger than me. She’s in some kind of shop, and in front of her there’s a kind of black box, like the coffin-charm on Zozie’s bracelet—

‘
Anouk!
’

I can tell that’s Maman’s voice. But I can’t see her now. She’s too far away. And Zozie’s dragging me into the dark, and my feet are following in the snow. And the little girl’s going to open the box, and there’s something terrible inside, and if only I
knew
, I could stop her, perhaps—

We’re opposite the chocolate shop. We’re standing at the corner of Place des Faux-Monnayeurs, looking down the cobbled street. There’s a street-lamp there, and it lights up the snow, and our shadows stretch all the way down to the steps. I can see Maman from the corner of my eye, looking out into the square. She looks a hundred miles away, and yet it can’t be very far. And there’s Roux, and Rosette, and Jean-Loup, and Nico, and their faces are very distant somehow, like something seen through a telescope—

The door opens. Maman steps out.

I can hear Nico’s voice from far away, saying,
What the hell’s that?

Behind them, the murmur of voices lost in a terminal blur of static.

The wind is rising. The Hurakan – and there’s no way Maman can fight that wind, although I can see she’s planning to try. She looks very calm. She’s almost smiling.
And I wonder how I or anyone else could have thought she looked anything like Zozie—

Zozie gives her cannibal smile. ‘At last, a flash of spirit?’ she says. ‘Too late, Vianne. I’ve won the game.’

‘You haven’t won anything,’ says Maman. ‘Your kind never wins. You may think you do, but the victory’s always an empty one.’

Zozie snarls. ‘How would you know? The child followed me of her own accord.’