The Lollipop Shoes (18 page)

Well, I knew what Zozie would have said to that. But I’m not Zozie; I hate scenes, and part of me just wanted to sit down at my desk and hide myself inside a book. But I’d promised I’d try; so I straightened up, looked her in the eye, and shot them all with my killer smile.

‘Fuck off,’ I said. ‘I’m fabulous.’ And, picking up the tennis ball, which had come to rest just between my feet, I bounced it –
pok!
– off Chantal’s head.

‘You’re It,’ I said.

And, making my way to the back of the room, I stopped in front of Jean-Loup’s desk, where Jean-Loup wasn’t even pretending to read any more, but was watching me with his mouth half-open in surprise.

‘Want a game?’ I said.

I led the way.

We talked for quite a long time. It turns out that we like a lot of the same things: old films in black-and-white, photography, Jules Verne, Chagall, Jeanne Moreau, the cemetery . . .

I’d always thought he looked a bit stuck-up – he never plays with the others, perhaps because he’s a year older, and he’s always taking pictures of weird things with that little camera of his – and I’d only spoken to him because I knew it would annoy Chantal and Suze.

But actually he’s OK; laughed at my story of Suze and her list; and when I told him where I lived, said, ‘You live in a
chocolaterie
? How terrific is that?’

I shrugged. ‘OK, I guess.’

‘Do you get to eat the chocolates?’

‘All the time.’

He rolled his eyes, which made me laugh. Then—

‘Hold it,’ he said, and pulled out that little camera of his – silver-coloured, and not much bigger than a box of kitchen matches – and cocked it at me. ‘Gotcha,’ he said.

‘Hey, stop it,’ I told him, turning away. I don’t like pictures of myself.

But Jean-Loup was looking into the camera’s little screen. He grinned. ‘Look at this.’ He showed it to me.

I don’t see many pictures of me. The few I have are formal ones, taken at some passport place, all white
background and no smile. In this one, I was laughing, and he’d taken the picture at a mad kind of angle, with me just turning towards the camera, my hair a blur and my face lit up—

Jean-Loup grinned. ‘Go on, admit it – it’s not so bad.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s OK. Been doing it long?’

‘Since I first went into hospital. I’ve got three cameras; my favourite’s an old manual Yashica that I only use for black-and-white; but the digital one’s pretty good, and I can carry it anywhere.’

‘What were you in hospital for?’

‘I’ve got this heart condition,’ he said. ‘That’s why I was kept back a year. I had to have two operations and miss four months of school. It was totally lame.’ (
Lame
is Jean-Loup’s favourite word.)

‘Is it serious?’ I asked.

Jean-Loup shrugged. ‘I actually died. On the operating table. I was officially dead for fifty-nine seconds.’

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Have you got a scar?’

‘Loads of them,’ said Jean-Loup. ‘I’m practically a freak.’

And then, before I knew it, we were talking properly; and I’d told him about Maman and Thierry; and he’d told me how his parents had divorced when he was nine, and how his father had remarried last year, and how it didn’t matter how nice she was, because—

‘Because it’s when they’re nice that you hate them most,’ I finished with a grin, and he laughed, and just like that, we were suddenly friends. Quietly, without a fuss; and somehow it didn’t matter any more that Suze preferred Chantal to me, or that I was always It when we played the tennis-ball game.

And waiting for the school bus, I stood with Jean-Loup at the front of the queue, and Chantal and Suze glared from their place in the middle, but didn’t say anything at all.

6

Monday, 19th November

ANOUK CAME HOME
from school today with an unaccustomed bounce in her step. She changed into her play clothes, kissed me exuberantly for the first time in weeks and announced that she was going out with a friend from school.

I didn’t press her for more details – Anouk has been so moody recently that I didn’t want to dampen her spirits – but I kept an eye out just the same. She hasn’t mentioned the subject of friends since her quarrel with Suzanne Prudhomme, and although I know better than to interfere in what may be nothing more than a children’s squabble, it makes me so sad to think of Anouk being left out.

I’ve tried so hard to make her fit in. I’ve invited Suzanne countless times, made cakes, arranged visits to the cinema. But nothing seems to make a difference; there’s a line that separates Anouk from the rest, a line that seems more pronounced as the days go by.

Today was different, somehow; and as she set off (at a
run, as always) I thought I could see the old Anouk, racing across the square in her red coat, her hair flying like a pirate’s flag and her shadow hopping at her heels.

I wonder who the friend was. Not Suzanne, in any case. But there’s something in the air today, some new optimism that makes light of my concerns. Maybe it’s the sun, back again after a week of cloudy skies. Maybe it’s the fact that, for the first time in three years, we have actually
sold out
of gift boxes. Maybe it’s just the scent of chocolate, and how good it is to be back at work again, to handle the pans and the ceramics, to feel the granite slab grow warm beneath my hands, to make those simple things that give people pleasure . . .

Why did I hesitate so long? Could it be that it still reminds me too much of Lansquenet – of Lansquenet and Roux, and Armande and Joséphine, and even the curé Francis Reynaud – all those people whose lives took a different turn just because I happened to pass by?

Everything comes home
, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can’t be helped; it’s part of what makes us who we are. Why should I fear it now? Why should I fear anything here?

We have worked so hard over the past three years. We have persevered. We deserve success. Now, at last, I think I can feel a change in the wind. And it’s all ours. No tricks, no glamours, just plain hard work.

Thierry’s in London again this week, supervising his King’s Cross project. This morning, he sent flowers again; a double handful of mixed roses, tied with raffia, with a card that reads:

To my favourite technophobe – love, Thierry.

It’s a sweet gesture – old-fashioned and just a little childish, like the milk chocolate squares he likes so much. It makes me feel slightly guilty to think that in all the rush of the past two days, I’ve barely thought about him at all, and his ring – so awkward to wear when making chocolate – has been lying in a drawer since Saturday night.

But he’ll be so pleased when he sees the shop and all the progress we have made. He doesn’t know much about chocolate; still thinks of it as just for women and children, and has quite failed to notice the growing popularity of high-quality chocolate over the past few years – so that it’s hard for him to envisage the
chocolaterie
as a serious concern.

Of course, it’s early days yet. But Thierry, when you see us again, I think I can promise you’ll be surprised.

Yesterday we began to redecorate the shop. Another of Zozie’s ideas, not mine, and at first I’d dreaded the disruption, the mess. But with Zozie, Anouk and Rosette helping out, what might have been a chore somehow ended up being a mad kind of game, with Zozie on the ladder painting the walls, her hair tied up in a green scarf and yellow paint all over one side of her face, and Rosette with her toy brush, attacking the furniture, and Anouk stencilling blue flowers and spirals and animal shapes across the wall, and all the chairs out in the sunny street, covered in dust-sheets and speckled with paint.

‘It doesn’t matter, we’ll paint them, too,’ said Zozie when we discovered Rosette’s little hand-prints on an old white kitchen chair. And so Rosette and Anouk made a game of it, with trays of ready-mix poster paint, and when they had finished the chair looked so cheery, with multicoloured hand-prints covering it all over, that we all did
the same with the other chairs, and with the small secondhand table that Zozie had bought for the front of the shop.

‘What’s happening? You’re not closing down?’

That was Alice, the blonde girl who drops by almost every week, but hardly ever buys anything. She hardly ever says anything either, but the stacked furniture, the dust-sheets and the multicoloured chairs drying in the street were enough to startle her into speech.

When I laughed she looked almost alarmed, but stopped to admire Rosette’s handiwork (and to accept a home-made truffle on the house, as part of the celebration). She seems quite friendly with Zozie, who has spoken to her once or twice in the shop, and she especially likes Rosette, and knelt beside her on the floor to measure her small hands against Rosette’s smaller, paint-smudged ones.

Then it was Jean-Louis and Paupaul, coming to see what all the fuss was about. Then Richard and Mathurin, the regulars from Le P’tit Pinson. Then Madame Pinot from around the corner, pretending to be on some kind of errand, but darting an eager look over her shoulder at the chaos outside the
chocolaterie
.

Fat Nico dropped by, and commented with his usual exuberance on the shop’s new look. ‘Hey, yellow and blue! My favourite colours! Was that your idea, Shoe Lady?’

Zozie smiled. ‘We all contributed.’

Actually she was barefoot today, her long, shapely feet gripping the rickety step-ladder. Some of her hair had escaped the scarf; her bare arms were exotically gloved with paint.

‘Looks fun,’ said Nico wistfully. ‘All the little baby-hands.’ He flexed his own hands, which are large and pale and chubby, and his eyes shone. ‘Wish I could try, but I guess you’re all done, hey?’

‘Go ahead,’ I told him, indicating the trays of poster paint.

He extended a hand towards a tray. There was red paint inside, only slightly grubby now. He hesitated for a moment, then dabbed his fingertips with a quick movement into the paint.

He grinned. ‘Feels pretty good,’ he said. ‘Like mixing pasta sauce without a spoon.’ He stretched out his hand again, this time letting the paint cover the palm.

‘Over here,’ said Anouk, indicating a place on one of the chairs. ‘Rosette missed a bit.’

Well, as it turned out, Rosette had missed lots of bits, and after that Nico stayed awhile to help Anouk with the stencilling, and even Alice stayed to watch, and I made hot chocolate for everyone, and we drank it like gypsies, out on the step, and laughed and laughed when a group of Japanese tourists came past and photographed us all sitting there.

As Nico said, it felt pretty good.

‘You know,’ said Zozie, when we were clearing away the painting things ready for the morning. ‘What this shop really needs is a name. There’s a sign up there—’ she pointed to the faded strip of wood hanging above the door – ‘but it doesn’t look as if there’s been any actual writing on it for years. How about it, Yanne?’

I gave a shrug. ‘You mean just in case people don’t realize what it is?’ As a matter of fact, I knew exactly what she meant. But a name is never just a name. To name a
thing is to give it power, to invest it with an emotional significance that, until now, my quiet little shop has never had.

Zozie wasn’t listening. ‘I think I could do a pretty good job. Why don’t you let me try?’ she said.

I shrugged again, feeling uneasy. But Zozie had been so very good, and her eyes were shining with such eagerness that I gave in. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But nothing fancy. Just
chocolaterie
. Nothing too chichi.’

What I meant, of course, was
nothing like Lansquenet
. No names, no slogans. It was already enough that somehow, my discreet plans for redecorating had turned into a psychedelic paint war.

‘Of course,’ said Zozie.

And so we took down the weathered sign. (Closer examination revealed the ghostly inscription
Frères Payen
, which could have been the name of a café or something different altogether.) The wood was faded but intact, Zozie declared; with a little rubbing-down and some fresh paint, she thought she might make something reasonably durable.

We went our separate ways then: Nico to his place on the Rue Caulaincourt, Zozie to her tiny bedsit on the other side of the Butte, where, she promised, she would work on the sign.

I could only hope it wouldn’t be too garish. Zozie’s colour schemes tend towards extravagance, and I had visions of a sign in lime-green and red and brilliant purple – perhaps with a picture of flowers or a unicorn – that I would have to display or hurt her feelings.

And so it was with a slight feeling of trepidation that this morning I followed her out of the shop – with my hands over my eyes, at her request – to see the result.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

For a moment I couldn’t speak. There it was: hanging above the door as if it had always been there, a rectangular yellow sign with the name of the shop carefully lettered in blue.

‘It’s not too chichi, do you think?’ There was a trace of anxiety in Zozie’s voice. ‘I know you said write something plain, but this just came to me and – well – what do you think?’