The Lollipop Shoes (7 page)

‘Nn-hm.’ I nodded.

‘You look alike—’ She stopped and smile-frowned a little, as if trying to figure out something that puzzled her. ‘And there’s something about you, isn’t there, Annie, something I can’t quite put my finger on—’

I didn’t say anything to that, of course. Silence is safer, Maman says, so that what you say can’t be used against you.

‘Well, you’re not a clone, that’s for sure. I bet you know a few tricks—’

‘Tricks?’ I thought of the waitress and the spilled lemon tea. I looked away, feeling suddenly awkward again, wishing someone would come with the bill so that I could say goodbye and run back home.

But our waitress was avoiding us, chatting with the man behind the coffee bar, laughing now and flicking her hair, the way Suze does sometimes when Jean-Loup Rimbault (that’s a boy she likes) is standing nearby. Besides, I’ve noticed that about waiters and waitresses: even when they serve you on time, they never want to bring you the bill.

But then Zozie made a little forked sign with her fingers, so very small I might have missed it. A little forked sign, like flicking a switch, and the waitress who looked like Jeanne Moreau turned round as if someone had prodded her and brought us the bill at once on a tray.

Zozie smiled and took out her purse. Jeanne Moreau waited, looking bored and sulky, and I half-expected Zozie to say something – after all, someone who can say
‘arse’ in an English tea-shop surely isn’t shy about speaking their mind.

But she didn’t. ‘Here’s fifty. You can keep the change.’ And she handed the waitress a five-euro note.

Well, even I could see it was a five. I saw it quite clearly, as Zozie put it on the tray and smiled. But somehow the waitress didn’t see.

Instead she said: ‘
Merci, bonne journée
,’ and Zozie made that sign with her hand, and put away her purse as if nothing had happened—

And then she turned and winked at me.

For a second I wasn’t sure I’d seen it right. It might just have been a normal kind of accident – after all, the place was crowded, the waitress was busy, and people sometimes make mistakes.

But after what had happened with the tea—

She smiled at me, just like a cat that could scratch you even as it sits purring on your knee.

Tricks
, she’d said.

Accident
, I thought.

I suddenly wished I hadn’t come; wished I hadn’t called to her that day in front of the
chocolaterie
. It’s only a game – it’s not even real – and yet it feels so dangerous, like a sleeping thing that you can only poke so many times before it opens its eyes for good.

I looked at my watch. ‘I have to go.’

‘Annie. Relax. It’s half past four—’

‘Maman worries if I’m late.’

‘Five minutes won’t hurt—’

‘I have to go.’

I think I expected her to stop me, somehow; to make me turn back, as the waitress had. But Zozie just smiled,
and I felt stupid at having panicked like that. Some people are just suggestible. The waitress was probably one of them. Or maybe they both made a mistake – or maybe I did.

But I knew I hadn’t. And she knew I’d seen. It was in her colours. And in the way she looked at me – half-smiling, as if we’d shared something more than just cake—

I know it’s not safe. But I like her. I really do. I wanted to say something to make her understand—

On impulse I turned, and found her still smiling.

‘Hey, Zozie,’ I said. ‘Is that your real name?’

‘Hey, Annie,’ she mocked. ‘Is that yours?’

‘Well, I—’ I was so stunned that for a second I nearly told her. ‘My
real
friends call me Nanou.’

‘And do you have many?’ she said, smiling.

I laughed and held up a single finger.

2

Tuesday, 6th November

WHAT AN INTERESTING
child. Younger than her contemporaries in some ways, but so much older in others, she has no difficulty in speaking with adults, but with other children she seems awkward, as if trying to assess their level of competence. With me she was expansive, funny, talkative, wistful, wilful but with an instinctive caution as soon as I touched – ever so lightly – on the subject of her strangeness.

Of course, no child wants to be seen as different. But Annie’s reserve goes further than this. It’s as if she’s hiding something from the world, some alien quality that might be dangerous if it were discovered.

Other people may not see it. But I’m not other people, and I find myself drawn to her in a way I find impossible to resist. I wonder if she knows
what
she is, if she understands – if she has any inkling of the potential in that sullen little head.

I met her again today, on her way home from school.
She was – not cool, precisely, but certainly less confiding than yesterday, as if aware of a mark overstepped. As I said, an interesting child, and all the more so for the challenge she presents. I sense that she is not impervious to seduction; but she is careful, very careful, and I will have to work slowly if I am not to frighten her away.

And so we simply talked for a while – I made no mention of her otherness, or the place she calls Lansquenet, or the chocolate shop – and then we went our separate ways, but not before I had told her where I lived, and where I’m working nowadays.

Working? Everyone needs a job. It gives me an excuse to play, to be with people, to observe them and to learn their little secrets. I’m not in need of the money, of course; which is why I can afford to take the first convenient job on offer. The one job any girl can find without difficulty in a place like Montmartre.

No, not
that
. Waitressing, of course.

It’s been a long, long time since I worked in a café. These days I don’t have to – the pay’s lousy and the hours are worse – but I feel that being a waitress somehow suits Zozie de l’Alba, and besides, it gives me a good vantage point from which to observe comings and goings in the neighbourhood.

Le P’tit Pinson, tucked into the corner of the Rue des Faux-Monnayeurs, is an old-style café from the dingy days of Montmartre, dark and smoky and panelled in layers of grease and nicotine. Its owner is Laurent Pinson, a sixty-five-year-old native Parisian with an aggressive moustache and poor personal hygiene. Like Laurent himself, the café’s appeal is generally limited to the older generation –
who appreciate its modest pricing and its
plat du jour
– and the whimsical like myself, who enjoy its owner’s spectacular rudeness and the extreme politics of its elderly patrons.

Tourists choose the Place du Tertre, with its pretty little cafés and gingham-topped tables along the cobbled lanes. Or the art déco
pâtisserie
on the lower Butte, with its jewelled array of tarts and confits. Or the English tea-shop on Rue Ramey. But I’m not interested in tourists. I’m interested in that
chocolaterie
, which I can see quite clearly from across the square. From here I can see who comes and goes, I can count the customers, monitor deliveries and generally acquaint myself with the rhythms of its little life.

The letters I stole on that first day have proved less than useful in practical terms. A stamped invoice dated 20th October, marked PAID IN CASH, from Sogar Fils, a confectionery supplier. But who pays in cash nowadays? An impractical, senseless means of payment – doesn’t this woman have an account? – which leaves me as ignorant as I was before.

The second envelope was a sympathy card for Madame Poussin, signed Thierry, with a kiss. Postmarked London, with a
see you soon, and please don’t worry
casually appended.

File that away for later use.

The third, on a faded postcard of the Rhône, was even less informative.

Heading north. I’ll drop by if I can.

Signed
R
, the card was addressed only to
Y and A
, though the writing was so careless that the Y looked more like a V.

The fourth, junk mail peddling financial services.

Still, I tell myself. There’s time.

‘Hey! It’s you!’ The artist again. I know him now; his name is Jean-Louis, and his friend with the beret is Paupaul. I see them often at Le P’tit Pinson, drinking beer and chatting up the ladies. Fifty euros pays for a pencil sketch – call it ten for the sketch, and forty for the flattery – and they have their spiel down to a fine art. Jean-Louis is a charmer – plain women are particularly susceptible – and it is his persistence, rather than his talent, that holds the secret of his success.

‘I won’t buy it, so don’t waste your time,’ I told him as he opened his pad.

‘Then I’ll sell it to Laurent,’ he said, with a wink. ‘Or maybe I’ll just keep it myself.’

Paupaul pretends indifference. He’s older than his friend, and his style is less exuberant. In fact he rarely speaks at all, but stands at his easel in the corner of the square, scowling furiously at the paper and occasionally scratching at it with frightening intensity. He has an intimidating moustache, and makes his patrons sit at length, while he scowls and scratches and mutters violently to himself before producing a work of such bizarre proportions that his customers are awed into paying up.

Jean-Louis was still sketching me as I made my way between the tables. ‘I’m warning you. I charge,’ I said.

‘Consider the lilies,’ said Jean-Louis airily. ‘They do not toil, neither do they demand a sitter’s fee.’

‘Lilies don’t have bills to pay.’

This morning I called in at the bank. I’ve been doing it every day this week. To withdraw twenty-five thousand euros in cash would certainly bring me the wrong kind of attention, but several withdrawals of modest size – a thousand here, two hundred there – are barely remembered from one day to the next.

Still, it never pays to be complacent.

And so I went in, not as Zozie, but as the colleague in whose name I opened the account – Barbara Beauchamp, a secretary with a hitherto unblemished record of trust. I made myself drab for the occasion; although true invisibility is impossible (besides being far too conspicuous), drabness is open to anyone, and a nondescript woman in a woolly hat and gloves can pass almost unseen anywhere.

Which is why I sensed it immediately. An odd sensation of scrutiny as I stood at the counter; an unprecedented alertness in their colours; a request to wait as they processed my cash; the scent and sound of something not quite right.

I did not wait for confirmation. I left the bank as soon as the cashier was out of sight, then slipped the cheque-book and card into an envelope and posted it in the nearest letter-box. The address was fictitious; the incriminating items will spend three months passing from one post office to the next until they end up in the dead-letter depot, never to be found. If I ever need to dispose of a body, I’ll do the same; sending parcelled hands and feet and bits of torso to blurry addresses across Europe and back, while police search in vain for the shallow grave.

Not that murder was ever my taste. Still, you should never completely dismiss any possibility. I found a
convenient clothes store in which to change back from Madame Beauchamp to Zozie de l’Alba, and, with an eye for anything out of the ordinary, returned by a roundabout route to my bed-and-breakfast in lower Montmartre and contemplated the future.

Damn.

Twenty-two thousand euros remained in Madame Beauchamp’s fake account – money that had cost me six months’ planning, research, performance and honing of my new identity. No chance of retrieving it now; although it was unlikely that I would be recognized from the bank’s blurry camera footage, it was more than likely that the account had been frozen, pending police investigation. Face it, the money was lost for ever, leaving me with little more than an extra charm on my bracelet – a mouse, as it happens, quite appropriate for poor Françoise.

The sad truth is, I tell myself, there’s no future in craftsmanship any more. Six wasted months, and I’m back where I started. No money, no life.

Well,
that
can change. All I need is a little inspiration. We’ll start with the chocolate shop, shall we? With Vianne Rocher, from Lansquenet, who for reasons unknown has recast herself as Yanne Charbonneau, mother of two, respectable widow of the Butte.

Do I sense a kindred spirit? No. But I do recognize a challenge. Though there’s little enough to be had from the
chocolaterie
at present, Yanne’s life is not entirely without appeal. And, of course, she has that child. That very interesting child.

I’m staying in a place just off the Boulevard de Clichy, ten minutes’ walk from Place des Faux-Monnayeurs. Two rooms the size of a postage stamp at the top of four flights
of narrow stairs, but cheap enough to suit my needs and discreet enough to preserve my anonymity. From there I can observe the streets; plot comings and goings; become a part of the scenery.

It’s not the Butte, which is out of my league. In fact, it’s rather a big step down from Françoise’s nice little place in the 11th. But Zozie de l’Alba doesn’t belong; and it suits her to live below the salt. All kinds of people live here: students, shopkeepers, immigrants, masseuses both registered and unregistered. There are half a dozen churches in this small area alone (debauch and religion, those Siamese twins); the street yields more litter than fallen leaves; there’s a perpetual smell of drains and dogshit. On this side of the Butte the pretty little cafés have given way to cheap takeaways and off-licences, around which the tramps congregate at night, drinking red wine from plastic-topped bottles before bedding down in the steel-shuttered doorways.