The Lollipop Shoes (53 page)

There. All gone.
I feel better now. Not that I’d ever suspect Zozie; but that face made me uncomfortable, with its twisted mouth and mean little eyes. I couldn’t have seen her before, could I? In the shop, or the street, or
perhaps on the bus? And that name – Françoise Lavery. Have I heard it somewhere else? It’s quite a common name, of course. But why does it make me think of—

A mouse?

4

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 5.20 p.m
.

WELL, I NEVER
liked that boy. A useful tool, that’s all he was, to prise her away from her mother’s influence and make her more receptive to mine. But now he has overstepped the mark – has dared to try and undermine me – and I’m afraid he’ll have to go.

I saw it in his colours as he prepared to leave the shop. He’d been upstairs with Anouk – listening to music, or playing games, or whatever those two get up to these days – and he greeted me politely enough as he picked up his anorak from the coat-stand behind the door.

Some people are easier to read than others; and Jean-Loup Rimbault, for all his guile, is still only a twelve-year-old. There was something too candid about that smile, something I’d seen more than once in my teaching days as Françoise. It’s the smile of a boy who knows too much and thinks he can get away with it. And
what was in that paper file that he left with Anouk in her bedroom just now?

Could it perhaps have been –
photographs
?

‘Coming to the party tonight?’

He nodded. ‘Sure. The shop looks great.’

Certainly, Vianne has been busy today. There are clusters of silver stars hanging from the ceiling and branches of candles ready to be lit. There is no dining-table here, so she has pushed the small tables together to make a single long one, covering them with the customary three tablecloths – one green, one white, one red. A wreath of holly hangs from the door, and cedarwood and fresh-cut pine fills the air with a foresty scent.

Around the room, the traditional thirteen desserts of Christmas are stacked on glass dishes like pirates’ treasure, gleaming and lustrous in topaz and gold. Black nougat for the devil, white nougat for the angels, and clementines, grapes, figs, almonds, honey, dates, apples, pears, quince jelly,
mendiants
all jewelled with raisins and peel, and
fougasse
made with olive oil and split like a wheel into twelve parts—

And of course there is the chocolate – the Yule log cooling in the kitchen; the nougatines, the celestines, the chocolate truffles piled on to the counter in a fragrant scatter of cocoa dust.

‘Try one,’ I say, handing them out. ‘You’ll see, they’re your favourites.’

He takes the truffle dreamily. Its aroma is pungent and slightly earthy, like mushrooms picked at the full moon. In fact there may actually be some mushroom in there – my specials are full of mysterious things – but this time the cocoa powder has been artfully doctored to deal with
importunate little boys, and besides, the sign of the Hurakan scratched in cocoa on the counter-top is more than enough to do the trick.

‘See you at the party,’ he says.

Actually, I don’t think you will. My little Nanou will miss you, of course; but not for very long, I think. In a very short time, the Hurakan is going to descend on Le Rocher de Montmartre, and when that happens—

Well, who knows? And wouldn’t knowing spoil the surprise?

5

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 6.00 p.m
.

SO NOW AT
last the
chocolaterie
’s shut, and there’s nothing but the poster on the door to suggest that anything’s happening here.

Christmas Party 7.30 tonight!
it says over a pattern of stars and monkeys.

Fancy Dress Recommended.

I still haven’t seen Zozie’s fancy dress. I guess it’s something fabulous, but she hasn’t told me what it is. So after watching the snow for nearly an hour, I got impatient and went to her room to see what she was doing.

But when I went in, I got a surprise. It wasn’t Zozie’s room any more. The sari-curtains had been taken down; the Chinese dressing-gown was gone from the back of the door, the ornaments from the lampshade. Even her shoes had vanished from the top of the mantelpiece, and that’s when it really sank in, I think.

Seeing them gone.

Her fabulous shoes.

There was a suitcase on the bed, a small one, leather, that looked as if it had seen a lot of travelling. Zozie was just closing it up, and she looked at me when I came in, and I knew what she’d say without even having to ask.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘I was going to tell you. Really I was. But I didn’t want to spoil your party for you—’

I couldn’t believe it. ‘You’re going tonight?’

‘I’d have to go some time,’ she said reasonably. ‘And after tonight it won’t matter so much.’

‘Why not?’

She shrugged. ‘Didn’t you call the Changing Wind? Don’t you want to be a family, you and Roux and Yanne and Rosette?’

‘That doesn’t mean you have to leave!’

She threw a stray shoe into the case. ‘You know that’s not the way it works. There’s a payoff, Nanou. There has to be.’

‘But
you’re
family too!’

She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t work. Not with Yanne. She disapproves of me too much. And maybe she’s right to disapprove. Things don’t go as smoothly when I’m around.’

‘But that’s not fair! Where will you go?’

Zozie looked up from her packing and smiled.

‘Wherever the wind takes me,’ she said.

6

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 7.00 p.m
.

JEAN-LOUP’S MOTHER PHONED
just now to say that her son has fallen ill rather suddenly, and won’t be coming after all. Anouk is naturally disappointed, and slightly worried about her friend, but the excitement of the party is too much to keep her down for long.

In her red cape and hood she looks more than ever like a Christmas bauble, skipping from here to there in a frenzy of activity. ‘Are they here yet?’ she repeats, although the invitations said seven-thirty and the church bell has barely rung the hour. ‘Can you see anyone outside?’

In fact the snow is so dense now that I can barely see the street-lamp across the square, but Anouk keeps pressing her face to the window, making a ghost of herself on the glass.

‘Zozie!’ she calls. ‘Are you ready yet?’

There comes a muffled reply from Zozie, who has been upstairs for the past two hours.

‘Can I come up?’ calls Anouk.

‘Not yet. I told you. It’s a surprise.’

There is something fey about Anouk tonight; an animation that is one part joy and three parts delirium. One moment she looks barely nine years old; the next she is half-adult and troubling, lovely in her red cloak, her hair like stormclouds around her face.

‘Calm down,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll wear yourself out.’

She hugs me impulsively, the way she used to when she was a child, but before I can hug her back, she has gone, flitting restlessly from dish to dish, glass to glass, rearranging holly leaves, ivy twists, candlesticks, napkins tied with scarlet string, multicoloured cushions on chairs, a cut-glass bowl from a charity shop now filled with a spiced garnet-red winter punch rich with nutmeg and cinnamon, spiked with lemon and a gasp of cognac and with a clove-studded orange suspended in the crimson depths.

Rosette, by contrast, is unusually calm. Swaddled in her monkey suit, she watches everything with wide eyes, but is most fascinated by the Advent house, with her very own Nativity scene with its falling snow lit up in a halo of light, with a group of monkeys standing by (Rosette insists that the monkey is a Christmas animal) in the place of the more customary ox and ass.

‘D’you think he’ll come?’

Of course she means Roux. Anouk has asked me so many times; and it hurts me to think of her disappointment if he does not. After all, why should he come? Why should he still be in Paris at all? But Anouk seems quite convinced that he is – has she seen him, I ask myself? – and the thought makes me feel dangerously light-headed,
as if being Anouk could be catching, somehow, and that snow at Yule might not be a chance weather phenomenon, but a magical event that could wipe out the past—

‘Don’t you
want
him to come?’ she says.

I think of his face; of the patchouli-machine-oil scent of him; the way his head dips when he’s working on something; his rat tattoo; his slow smile. I’ve wanted him now for so long. And I’ve fought him too – his diffidence, his scorn for convention, his stubborn refusal to conform—

And I think of all the years we fled, as we ran from Lansquenet to Les Laveuses to Paris and Boulevard de la Chapelle with its neon sign and the mosque nearby; to Place des Faux-Monnayeurs and the
chocolaterie
, trying vainly at every stopping-place to fit in, to change, to be average—

And I wonder – in all that travelling, in hotel-rooms and boarding-houses and villages and towns; across those years of longing and fear—

Who was I really running from? The Black Man? The Kindly Ones? My mother? Myself?

‘Yes, Nou. I want him to come.’

Such a relief to say the words. To admit it at last, against all reasonable argument. Having tried and failed to find, if not love, then a kind of contentment with Thierry, to admit to myself that some things simply cannot be rationalized; that love is not a matter of choice; that sometimes you can’t escape the wind—

Of course Roux never believed I’d settle down. He always said I was fooling myself; expected, in his quiet arrogance, that some day I would admit defeat. I want him to come. But all the same, I won’t run away – not if Zozie
brings the whole place down in ruins on my head. This time, we stand. Whatever it takes.

‘Someone’s here!’ The wind-chimes ring. But the figure at the door in its curly wig is far too bulky to be Roux.

‘Careful, folks! Wide load coming through!’

‘Nico!’ cries Anouk, and throws herself at the large figure – frogged coat, knee boots and jewellery to shame a king. He is carrying an armful of presents, which he drops under the Christmas tree, and although I know the room is not large, he seems to fill it with his giant good cheer.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’ says Anouk.

‘Henri IV, of course,’ says Nico grandly. ‘The culinary king of France. Hey—’ He stops for a moment to sniff the air. ‘Something smells good. I mean – really good. What’s cooking, Annie?’

‘Oh, lots of things.’

Behind him, Alice has come as a fairy, complete with tutu and sparkly wings, although traditional fairies don’t often wear such big boots. She is vivid and laughing with enjoyment, and although she is still slender, her face seems to have lost some of its sharpness, making her prettier, less fragile—

‘Where’s Shoe Lady?’ says Nico.

‘She’s getting ready,’ says Anouk, dragging Nico by the hand to his place at the laden dinner-table. ‘Come on, get a drink, there’s everything.’ She dips a ladle into the punch. ‘Don’t go nuts on the macaroons. There’s enough to feed an army here.’

Next comes Madame Luzeron. Far too dignified for fancy dress, but festive in her sky-blue twinset, she drops her presents under the tree and accepts a glass of punch
from Anouk and a smile from Rosette, who is playing with her wooden dog on the floor.