The Lollipop Shoes (23 page)

She found me in the kitchen five minutes later. By then
she was pale with suppressed rage. I know how it feels; that sick-to-the-stomach, sick-to-the-soul, lurching sense of helplessness.

‘You have to make them go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want them here when Maman gets back.’

What she meant was I
don’t want to give them any more ammunition
.

I looked sympathetic. ‘They’re customers. What can I do?’

She looked at me.

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘They’re your friends.’

‘They’re
not
!’

‘Oh. Then—’ I pretended to hesitate. ‘Then it wouldn’t be so much of an Accident if you and I –
interfered
a little.’

Her colours flared at the very thought. ‘Maman says it’s dangerous . . .’

‘Maman has her reasons, perhaps.’

‘What reasons?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, Nanou, adults sometimes withhold knowledge from their kids when they’re trying to protect them. And sometimes they’re not so much protecting the child as protecting themselves from the consequences of that knowledge . . .’

She looked puzzled at that. ‘You think she lied to me?’ she said.

It was a risk, I knew that. But I’ve taken my fair share of risks – and besides, she
wants
to be seduced. It’s the rebel in the soul of every good child; the desire to flaunt authority; to overthrow those little gods that call themselves our parents.

Annie sighed. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Oh, yes I do. You’re scared,’ I said. ‘You’re scared of being different. You think it makes you stand out.’

She thought about that for a while.

‘That’s not it,’ she said at last.

‘Then
what
?’ I said.

She looked at me. Behind the door to the shop I could hear the glassy, squealing voices of teenage girls up to no good.

I gave her my most sympathetic smile. ‘You know, they’re never going to leave you alone. They know where you are now. They could come back anytime. They’ve already had a go at Nico—’

I saw her flinch. I know how much she likes him.

‘Do you want them back here every night? Sitting there, laughing at you?’

‘Maman would make them go away,’ she said, though she didn’t sound too sure.

‘And then what?’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it happen. It happened to my mother and me. First the small things, the things we thought we could cope with – the practical jokes, the shoplifting, the graffiti on the shutters at night. You can live with those things if you have to, you know. It isn’t nice, but you can live with them. But it never stops there. They never give up. Dogshit on the doorstep; odd phone calls in the middle of the night; stones through the windows; and then one day, it’s petrol through the letter-box and everything goes up in smoke . . .’

I should know. It nearly happened. An occult bookshop attracts attention, especially when it’s out of the city centre. Letters to the local press; leaflets condemning Hallowe’en; even a small demonstration outside the shop, with hand-written placards and half a dozen right-thinking members of the parish campaigning like mad to close us down.

‘Didn’t that happen in Lansquenet?’

‘Lansquenet was different.’

Her eyes flickered towards the door. I could feel her working it out in her mind. It was close, I could feel it, like static in the air—

‘Do it,’ I said.

She looked at me.

‘Do it. I promise there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

Her eyes were bright. ‘Maman says—’

‘Parents don’t know everything. And sooner or later you’re going to have to learn to look after yourself. Go on. Don’t be a victim, Nanou. Don’t let them make you run away.’

She thought about that, but I could tell my words had not yet struck home.

‘There’s worse things than running away,’ she said.

‘Is that what your mother says? Is that why she changed her name? Is that why she’s made you so scared? Why won’t you tell me what happened in Les Laveuses?’

That struck closer. But not close enough. Her face took on the stubborn, self-contained look that adolescent girls do so well; the look that says,
you can talk and talk
—

So I gave her a nudge. Just a little one. Made my colours iridesce; reached for the secret, whatever it was—

And then I saw it – but fleetingly – a series of pictures like smoke on water.

Water. That’s it. A river
, I thought.
And a silver cat, a little cat charm
– both of them lit with a Hallowe’en light. I reached again, almost touching it now – then—

BAM!

It was like leaning against an electrified fence. A jolt went through me, knocking me back. The smoke
dispersed; the image broke up; every nerve in my body seemed to jangle with electricity. I sensed that it was quite unplanned – a release of pent-up energy like that of a child stamping its foot – but if I’d had even half that power when I was her age . . .

Annie was looking at me, fists clenched.

I smiled at her. ‘You’re good,’ I said.

She shook her head.

‘Oh, yes you are. You’re very good. Maybe better than me. A gift—’

‘Yeah, right.’ She spoke in a low, tense voice. ‘Some gift. I’d rather be good at dancing, or watercolours.’ A thought occurred to her, and she flinched. ‘You won’t tell Maman?’

‘Why should I?’ I said. ‘What? You think you’re the only one who can keep a secret?’

She studied my face for a long time.

Outside, I heard the wind-chimes ring.

‘They’ve gone,’ said Annie.

She was right; looking inside, I could see that the girls were gone, leaving only their scattered chairs, their half-empty Coke cans and a faint aroma of bubble gum and hairspray and the biscuity scent of teenage sweat.

‘They’ll be back,’ I said softly.

‘They might not,’ said Annie.

‘Well, if you need help . . .’

‘I’ll ask,’ she said.

Ask, ask.
What am I, a fairy godmother?

I searched for Les Laveuses, of course, starting with the internet, and got nothing; not even a tourist information site, not the slightest reference to a festival or a chocolate
shop. Looking further, a single mention of a local
crêperie
, quoted in a food magazine. The owner, a widow: Françoise Simon.

Could
she
have been Vianne under another name? It’s possible; though there is no mention in the piece of the woman herself. But a phone call later, and the thread has already run out. Françoise herself answers the phone. Her voice on the phone is dry and suspicious; the voice of a woman in her seventies. I tell her I am a journalist. She tells me that she has never heard of Vianne Rocher. Yanne Charbonneau? Likewise. Goodbye.

Les Laveuses is a tiny place, barely a village, I understand. It has a church, a couple of shops, the
crêperie
, the café, the war memorial. The land around is mostly farmland: sunflowers, maize and fruit trees. The river runs beside it like a long brown dog. A nothing place, or so you’d think – yet there’s something about it that resonates. Some gleam of memory – some squib in the news . . .

I went to the library; asked for the archives. They have every issue of
Ouest-France
, stored on disk and microfilm. I began last night, at six o’clock. Searched for two hours, then went to work. Tomorrow I’ll do the same – and again – until I find whatever it is. That place is the key – Les Laveuses, by the Loire. And once I have it, who knows what secrets that key may unlock?

My mind keeps going back to Annie.
I’ll ask
, she promised me last night. But to ask for help, there must be a need – a genuine need far beyond the petty annoyances of the Lycée Jules Renard. Something to throw caution to the wind and to send both of them running into the arms of their good friend Zozie.

I know what they fear.

But what do they
need
?

This afternoon, alone in the shop while Vianne took Rosette for a walk, I went upstairs to explore her things. Delicately, you understand – my object is not simple theft, but something infinitely more far-reaching. As it turns out, she doesn’t have much: a wardrobe more elementary than my own; a framed picture on the wall (probably bought from the
marché aux puces
); a patchwork bedspread (I’d guess home-made); three pairs of shoes – all black, how dull is that? And finally, under the bed, gold: a wooden box the size of a shoe-box, filled with assorted junk.

Not that Vianne Rocher would think it so. I’m used to living out of boxes and bags; and I know that these people gather no moss. The things inside the wooden box are the jigsaw pieces of her life; things she could never leave behind; her past, her life, her secret heart.

I opened it with the greatest of care. Vianne is secretive, which makes her suspicious. She’ll know the precise arrangement of every piece of paper, every object, every thread, every scrap, every particle of dust. She’ll know if something has been disturbed; but I have an excellent visual memory, and I do not mean to disturb anything.

Out they come, one by one. Vianne Rocher in abridgement. First, a set of Tarot cards – nothing special, just the Marseille pack, but clearly well-used and yellowed with age.

Underneath, there are documents – passports in the name of Vianne Rocher and a birth certificate for Anouk of the same surname. So Anouk has become Annie, I
thought; as Vianne became Yanne. No papers for Rosette, which is odd, but an out-of-date passport in the name of Jeanne Rocher, that I guess may have belonged to Vianne’s mother. From her photograph I can see that she doesn’t look a lot like Vianne – but then, Anouk doesn’t look much like Rosette. A piece of faded ribbon, on which hangs a lucky charm in the shape of a cat. A couple of photographs come next – barely a dozen in all. In them I recognize a younger Anouk; a younger Vianne; a younger Jeanne in black-and-white. All carefully stored and secured with a ribbon, along with some rather old letters and a thin wedge of newspaper clippings. Carefully flicking through, cautious of yellowed edges and brittle folds, I recognize an account of the chocolate festival in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, taken from a local paper. Much the same as what I have already seen, but the photograph is larger, and shows Vianne with two other people – a man and a woman, she long-haired and wearing some kind of tartan coat, he smiling with discomfort in the camera’s eye. Friends, perhaps? There are no names in the article.

Next, a clipping from a Paris newspaper, crisp and brown as a dead leaf. I’m afraid to open it out, but I can already see that it concerns the disappearance of a young child, a Sylviane Caillou, snatched from her car seat more than thirty years ago. Next, a more recent clipping, an account of a freak tornado in Les Laveuses, a tiny village on the Loire. Strangely trivial things, you might think, but important enough to Vianne Rocher for her to bring them with her all this way, over so many years, and to hide them in this little box – untouched for some time, or so I’d guess from the layer of dust . . .

So these are your ghosts, Vianne Rocher. Strange, how
very modest they seem. My own are more impressive; but then again, I find that modesty is a very second-rate virtue. You could have done so much better, Vianne. With my help, perhaps you still can.

I sat at my laptop for hours last night, drinking coffee, watching the neon lights from outside and going over the question again and again. Nothing more on Les Laveuses; nothing more on Lansquenet. I was beginning to believe Vianne Rocher as elusive a creature as myself, a castaway on the rock of Montmartre; without a past; impregnable.

Absurd, of course. Nothing’s impregnable. But with all the direct lines of enquiry exhausted, only one avenue remained, and this was what kept me wondering until late into the night.

It’s not that I was afraid, of course. But these things can be so unreliable, raising more questions than they answer – and if Vianne suspected what I’d done, then any chance I had of getting close to her was gone.

Still, taking risks is part of the game. It’s been a long time since I did any scrying – my System relies more on practical methods than bell, book and candle, and nine times out of ten you get quicker results from the internet. But this is a time for creativity.

A dose of cactus root, dried and powdered and infused in hot water, helps to achieve the required state of mind. This is
pulque
, the divine intoxicant of the Aztecs, reinvented a little for my own purpose. Then comes the sign of the Smoking Mirror, scrawled on the dusty floor at my feet. I sit down cross-legged with my laptop in front of me, turn on the screensaver to a suitably abstract theme, and wait for illumination.

My mother certainly wouldn’t have approved. She
always favoured the traditional crystal ball in divination, though at a pinch she would accept the cheaper alternatives – magic mirrors or Tarot cards. Then again, she would – she stocked the things, after all – and if she ever experienced a genuine revelation from any of them, then I certainly never heard anything about it.

There are a number of popular myths about scrying. One is that you need special apparatus. You don’t. Just closing your eyes can be enough; although I rather like the images that come from watching a television set between stations, or the fractal patterns of my computer’s screensaver. It’s just a system like any other; a means of keeping the analytical left brain occupied with trivia, while the creative right brain looks for clues.

Then—

Just drift.

It’s a rather pleasant sensation; enhanced as the drug begins to take. It starts as a faint sense of dislocation; the air yawns around me, and although I do not avert my gaze from the screen I am aware that the room feels much larger than usual, the walls receding into the middle distance and booming, ballooning—

Breathing deeply, I think of Vianne.

Her face on the screen in front of me; sepia, like newsprint. Around me, a circle of lights, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. They draw me in, like fireflies.

What’s your secret, Vianne?

What’s your secret, Anouk?