The Lollipop Shoes (47 page)

And there is something else, too. A spiral symbol in the sugar snow, drawn with the tip of a small finger. I’ve seen it before, in Anouk’s room, chalked up on her noticeboard; drawn in crayon on a pad; reproduced a hundred times with buttons and jigsaw-pieces on this floor, now lustrous with that undeniable glamour—

And now I begin to understand. Those signs scratched under the counter-top. The medicine bags hanging over the door. The new influx of customers; the friends we have made; all the changes that have occurred here over the past few weeks. This is far more than a child’s game. This is more like a secret campaign over a territory I was not even aware was in dispute.

And the general behind this campaign?

Do I even need to ask?

4

Friday, 21st December
Winter Solstice

IT’S ALWAYS MAD
on the last day of term. Lessons are mostly games and tidying up; there are form parties, cakes and Christmas cards; teachers who haven’t smiled all year go around wearing novelty Christmas bauble earrings and Santa hats and sometimes even giving out sweets.

Chantal and Co. have been keeping their distance. Since they got back some time last week, they haven’t been half as popular as they used to be. Maybe it’s a ringworm thing. Suze’s hair is coming back, though she still wears her beanie all the time. Chantal looks OK, I guess, but Danielle, who was the first to call Rosette those names, has lost most of her hair
and
her eyebrows as well. They can’t possibly know that
I
did that – but all the same, they keep out of my way, like sheep around an electric fence. No more
It
games. No more pranks. No more jokes about my hair, or visits to the
chocolaterie
. Mathilde heard Chantal tell Suze I was ‘creepy’. Jean-Loup and I just
laughed like drains. ‘Creepy.’ I mean, how lame can you get?

But now there’s only three days to go, and there’s still no sign at all of Roux. I’ve been looking out for him all week, but he hasn’t been seen by anyone. I even went round to the hostel today, but there was no sign of anyone there at all, and Rue de Clichy isn’t somewhere you’d want to hang around – especially not now when it’s getting dark, with sick splattered on the pavements and sleeping drunks bundled into the steel-shuttered doorways.

But I thought he’d be here last night, at least – for Rosette’s birthday, if nothing else – and of course he wasn’t. I miss him so much. But I can’t help thinking there’s something wrong. Did he lie about having a boat? Did he forge that cheque? Has he gone for good? Thierry says he’d better be gone, if he knows what’s good for him. Zozie says he might still be around, hiding out somewhere nearby. Maman doesn’t say anything.

I’ve told Jean-Loup about it all. Roux, Rosette, and the whole mess. I told him Roux was my best friend, and now I’m afraid he’s gone for good, and he kissed me and said
he
was my friend—

It was just a kiss. Not anything gross. But now I feel all shivery and tingly, like there’s a triangle playing inside my stomach or something, and I think perhaps—

Oh, boy.

He says I should talk to Maman, and try to sort things out with her, but she’s always so busy nowadays, and sometimes at dinner she’s so quiet and she looks at me in a sad kind of disappointed way, as if there’s something I ought to have done, and I don’t know what to say to make things better—

Maybe that’s why I slipped tonight. I’d been thinking of Roux and the party again, and whether I can trust him to come after all. Because missing Rosette’s birthday’s bad enough, but if he’s not there on Christmas Eve, then it won’t work out the way we planned, like he’s some special secret ingredient to a recipe that can’t be finished otherwise. And if it doesn’t happen right, then things will never go back to the way they were before, and they need to, they need to, especially now . . .

Zozie had to go out tonight, and Maman was working late again. She’s getting so many orders now that she can hardly handle all of them; and so for dinner I made a pot of spaghetti, then took mine up to my room so Maman could have space to work.

It was ten o’clock when I went to bed, but even then I couldn’t sleep, so I went down to the kitchen for a drink of milk. Zozie still wasn’t back and Maman was making chocolate truffles. Everything smelt of chocolate: Maman’s dress; her hair; even Rosette, who was playing on the kitchen floor with a pat of dough and some pastry-cutters.

It all looked so safe; so familiar. I ought to have known it was a mistake. Maman looked tired and kind of stressed; she was pounding away at the truffle paste like it was bread dough or something, and when I came down for my glass of milk she hardly looked at me at all.

‘Hurry up, Anouk,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you staying up too late.’

Well, Rosette’s only four, I thought, and she’s allowed to stay up late—

‘It’s the holidays,’ I said.

‘I don’t want you falling ill,’ said Maman.

Rosette pulled on my pyjama-leg, wanting to show me her pastry shapes.

‘That’s nice, Rosette. Shall we cook them now?’

Rosette grinned and signed:
yum, yum
.

Thank goodness for Rosette, I thought. Always happy; always smiling. Not like everyone else round here. When I grow up, I’ll live with Rosette; we could stay on a boat on the river, like Roux, and eat sausages right out of the can, and light bonfires at the side of the river, and maybe Jean-Loup could live nearby—

I lit the oven and took out a baking tray. Rosette’s pastry shapes were a bit grubby, but that wouldn’t matter when they were cooked. ‘We’ll bake them twice, like biscuits,’ I said. ‘Then we can hang them on the Christmas tree.’

Rosette laughed and hooted at the pastry shapes through the glass oven door, signing for them to cook fast. That made me laugh, and for a minute it felt OK, as if a cloud had gone from overhead. Then Maman spoke, and the cloud was back.

‘I found something of yours,’ she said, still pounding away at the truffle paste. I wondered what she’d found, and where. In my room, or my pockets, perhaps. Sometimes I think she spies on me. I can always tell when she’s been through my things: books left out of place; papers moved; toys put away. I don’t know what she’s looking for – but so far she hasn’t found my secret special hiding-place. It’s a shoe-box, hidden at the bottom of my wardrobe, with my diary, and some pictures, and some other stuff that I don’t want anyone to see.

‘This is yours, isn’t it?’ She reached into the kitchen drawer and pulled out Roux’s peg-doll, which I’d left in the pocket of my jeans. ‘Did you make this?’

I nodded.

‘Why?’

For a while I didn’t say anything. What could I say? I don’t think I could have explained even if I’d wanted to. To have everything right back in its place; to bring Roux back, and not just Roux—

‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you?’ she said.

I didn’t answer. She already knew.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, Anouk?’ she said.

‘Well, why didn’t
you
tell me he was Rosette’s dad?’

Now Maman went very still. ‘Who told you that?’

‘No one,’ I said.

‘Was it Zozie?’

I shook my head.

‘Then who?’

‘I just guessed.’

She put down the spoon on the side of the dish and sat down very slowly on the kitchen chair. She sat there in silence for such a long time that I could smell the pastry shapes beginning to burn. Rosette was still playing with the pastry-cutters, stacking them up on top of each other. They are made of plastic, six of them, all in different colours: a purple cat, a yellow star, a red heart, a blue moon, an orange monkey and a green diamond. I used to like playing with them when I was small, making chocolate biscuits and gingerbread shapes, and decorating them with yellow and white icing-sugar from a squeezy bag.

‘Maman?’ I said. ‘Are you OK?’

For a moment she didn’t say anything, just looked at me, eyes dark as forever. ‘Did you tell him?’ she said at last.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. She could see it in my colours just as I could see it in hers. I wanted to say that it was all right, that she didn’t have to lie to me, that I knew all kinds of things now, that
I
could help
her
—

‘Well, now at least we know why he’s gone.’

‘You think he’s gone?’

Maman just shrugged.

‘He wouldn’t go because of that!’

Now she gave a tired smile and held out the peg-doll, all gleaming with the sign of the Changing Wind.

‘It’s just a doll, Maman,’ I said.

‘Nanou, I thought you trusted me.’

I could see her colours then, all sad greys and anxious yellows, like old newspapers kept up in an attic somewhere that somebody wanted to throw away. And now I could see what Maman was thinking – flashes of it, anyway – like flicking through a scrapbook of thoughts. A picture of me, six years old, sitting beside her at a chrome-topped counter, both of us grinning like mad, with a tall glass of creamy hot chocolate between us and two little spoons. A story book, with pictures, left open on a chair. A drawing of mine, with two shaky people that might have been me and Maman, both with smiles as big as summer watermelons, standing under a lollipop tree. Me fishing from Roux’s boat. Me, now, running with Pantoufle, running towards something I can never reach—

And something – a shadow – over us.

It frightened me, to see her so afraid. And I wanted to trust her, to tell her that it was OK, and how nothing was ever really lost, because Zozie and I were bringing it back—

‘Bringing what back?’

‘Don’t worry, Maman. I know what I’m doing. This time there won’t be an Accident.’

Her colours flared, but her face stayed calm. She smiled at me, speaking very slowly and patiently, as if she was talking to Rosette. ‘Listen, Nanou. This is very important. I need you to tell me everything.’

I hesitated. I’d promised Zozie—

‘Trust me, Anouk. I need to know.’

So I tried to explain about Zozie’s System; and the colours, and the names, the Mexican symbols, and the Changing Wind, and our lessons up in Zozie’s room, and the way I’d helped Mathilde and Claude, and how we’d helped the chocolate shop to break even at last, and Roux, and the peg-dolls, and how Zozie had said there were no such things as Accidents, only regular people and people like us.

‘You said it wasn’t real magic,’ I said. ‘But Zozie says we should use what we’ve got. We shouldn’t just pretend we’re like everyone else. We shouldn’t have to hide any more . . .’

‘Sometimes hiding’s the only way.’

‘No, sometimes you can fight back.’

‘Fight back?’ she said.

So then I told her what I’d done at school; and how Zozie had told me about riding the wind, and using the wind, and how we shouldn’t be afraid. And finally I told her about Rosette and me, and how we’d called the Changing Wind to bring Roux back, so we’d be a family—

She flinched at that, like she’d burnt herself.

‘And Thierry?’ she said.

Well, he had to go. Surely Maman could see that. ‘Nothing bad happened, did it?’ I said. Except that—

Maybe it did
, I thought. Maybe if Roux really did forge that cheque, then maybe
that
was the Accident. Maybe it’s what Maman says: that nothing comes without a price, and even magic has to have an equal and opposite reaction, like Monsieur Gestin tells us in physics at school—

Maman turned to the kitchen stove. ‘I’m making hot chocolate. Do you want some?’

I shook my head.

She made the chocolate anyway, grating it into the hot milk, adding nutmeg and vanilla and a cardamom pod. It was getting late – eleven o’clock – and Rosette was nearly asleep on the floor.

And for a moment I thought it was all right, and I was happy I’d cleared the air, because I hate having to hide from Maman, and I was thinking that perhaps now she knew the truth she wouldn’t be afraid any more, and she could be Vianne Rocher again, and fix it so we’d be all right—

She turned, and I knew I’d made a mistake.

‘Nanou, please. Take Rosette to bed. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.’

I looked at her. ‘You’re not angry?’ I said.

She shook her head, but I could see she was. Her face was white and very still, and I could see her colours, all mixed up in reds and angry oranges and panicky zigzags of grey and black.

‘It isn’t Zozie’s fault,’ I said.

Her face told me she didn’t agree.

‘You won’t tell her, will you?’

‘Just go to bed, Nou.’

So I did, and lay awake for a long time, listening to the
wind and rain in the eaves and watching the clouds and the stars and the white Christmas lights, all jumbled up against the wet windowpane so that after a while there was no way to tell which were the real stars and which were the fake.

5