The Lollipop Shoes (29 page)

‘It’s too late for all that,’ I said. ‘Four years ago, maybe – but not now.’

‘Why? Did you quarrel?’

She sounds like Anouk. I found myself trying to explain to her, too, that things are not simple, that houses must be made of stone, because when the wind comes howling by, only solid stone will keep us from blowing away—

Why pretend?
he says in my mind.
What is it that makes you try to fit in? What is it about these people that makes you want to be like them?

‘No, we didn’t quarrel,’ I said. ‘We just – went different ways.’

A sudden, startling image in my mind – the Pied Piper
with his flute, all the children following – but for the lame one, left behind as the mountain closes in his wake—

‘So what about Thierry?’ she said.

Good question, I thought. Does he suspect? He’s no fool, either; and yet there’s a kind of blindness in him, which might be arrogance or trust or a little of both. And yet he’s still suspicious of Roux. I saw it last night – that measuring look – the instinctive aversion of the solid city dweller for the drifter, the gypsy, the traveller . . .

You choose your family, Vianne
, I thought.

‘Well, I guess you’ve made your choice.’

‘It’s the right one. I know it is.’

But I could tell she didn’t believe me. As if she could see it in the air around me like candyfloss gathering on a spindle. But there are so many kinds of love; and when the hot, selfish, angry kind has long since burnt itself out, thank all the gods for men like Thierry; those safe and unimaginative men, who think
passion
is just a word from books, like
magic
or
adventure
.

Zozie was still watching me with that patient half-smile, as if she expected me to say something more. When I didn’t, she simply shrugged and held out a dish of
mendiants
. She makes them as I do myself: the chocolate thin enough to snap, but thick enough to satisfy; a generous sprinkle of fat raisins; a walnut, an almond; a violet; a crystallized rose.

‘Try one,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

The gunpowder scent of chocolate arose from the little dish of
mendiants
, smelling of summer and lost time. He had tasted of chocolate when I first kissed him; and the scent of damp grass had come from the ground where we had lain side-by-side; and his touch had been
unexpectedly soft, and his hair like summer marigolds in the dying light—

Zozie was still holding out the dish of
mendiants
. It’s made of blue Murano glass, with a little gold flower on the side. It’s only a bauble, and yet I’m fond of it. Roux gave it to me in Lansquenet, and I have carried it with me ever since, in my luggage, in my pockets, like a touchstone.

I looked up and saw Zozie looking at me. Her eyes were a distant, fairytale blue, like something you might see in dreams.

‘You won’t tell anyone?’ I said.

‘Of course not.’ She picked up a chocolate between delicate fingers and held it out for me to take. Rich, dark chocolate, rum-soaked raisins, vanilla, rose and cinnamon . . .

‘Try one, Vianne,’ she said with a smile. ‘I happen to know they’re your favourites.’

4

Monday, 3rd December

A GOOD DAY’S
work, if I say so myself. So much of my work here is a juggling act; a series of balls and blades and flaming torches to be kept in the air for as long as it takes—

It took some time to be sure of Roux. He’s sharp enough to cut, that one, and needs careful handling, and it was all I could do to make him stay. But I managed to hold him on Saturday night, and with the help of a few encouraging words, I’ve managed to keep him in check so far.

It wasn’t easy, I have to say. His first impulse was to head straight back to where he’d come from, never to be seen again. I didn’t need to look at his colours to know; I could see it in his face as he marched down the Butte with his hair in his eyes and his hands stuck fiercely into his pockets. Thierry was following him too, and I was forced to clear the way with a little cantrip to make him slip, and in the seconds that he was delayed, caught up with Roux and took his arm.

‘Roux,’ I told him. ‘You can’t just leave. There are things you don’t know about all of this.’

He shook off my arm without slowing down. ‘What makes you think I want to know?’

‘Because you’re in love with her,’ I said.

Roux just shrugged and kept on walking.

‘And because she’s having second thoughts, but she doesn’t know how to tell Thierry.’

Now he was listening. He slackened his pace. I seized the opportunity and made the claw sign of One Jaguar right at his back – a cantrip that should have stopped him dead, but which Roux just shook off instinctively.

‘Hey, stop it,’ I said, more in frustration than anything else.

He shot me a look of feral curiosity.

‘You need to give her time.’

‘What for?’

‘To make up her mind what she really wants.’

He had stopped walking altogether now, and was watching with new intensity. I felt a twitch of annoyance at that – he was so obviously blind to anyone who wasn’t Vianne – but there’d be time for that later, I told myself. For the moment, I just needed him here. After that, I could make him pay at leisure.

Meanwhile, however, Thierry had picked himself up, and was heading towards us down the street. ‘We don’t have time for this now,’ I said. ‘Meet me Monday, after work.’

‘Work?’ he said. He began to laugh. ‘You think I’m going to work for
him
?’

‘You’d better,’ I said. ‘If you want my help.’

After that, I had just enough time to rejoin Thierry as he approached. Barely a few dozen yards away, and hulking
in his cashmere coat, he glared at me, and at Roux behind me, with the black-button-eyed ferocity of a big plush bear gone suddenly rogue.

‘You’ve blown it now,’ I told him softly. ‘What possessed you to behave like that? Yanne’s very upset—’

He bridled at that. ‘What did I do? It was—’

‘Never mind
what did I do
. I can help you, but you have to be nice.’ Savagely I made the sign of Lady Blood Moon with my fingertips. That seemed to calm him; he looked dismayed. I shot him again, this time with the masterful sign of One Jaguar, and saw his colours subside a little.

He’s so much easier than Roux, I thought. So much more cooperative. In a few words, I told him the plan. ‘It’s simple,’ I said. ‘There’s no way you can lose. It makes you look magnanimous. You’ll have the help you need in the flat. You’ll see more of Yanne. And what’s more . . .’ I lowered my voice again. ‘You can keep an eye on
him
.’

Well, that did it. I knew it would. That delightful combination of vanity, suspicion and supreme self-confidence – I hardly needed glamours at all, he did it all so well himself.

Yes, I’m almost getting to like Thierry. So comfortable, so predictable, with no sharp edges on which to be cut. Best of all, he’s so easily charmed – a smile, a word, and he’s all mine. Unlike Roux, with his sullen mouth and look of permanent suspicion.

Damn him, I thought. What’s wrong with me? I look like Vianne, I talk like Vianne – he should have been a pushover. But some people are just tougher than others, and my timing so far has been all wrong. Still, I can wait – for a few days, at least. And if glamours won’t work, then chemicals will.

Today I waited for closing-time impatiently, with an eye to the clock. It seemed to me like a very long day, but I spent it pleasantly enough, while outside the rain turned slowly to mist and the people went by like folk in a dream, occasionally stopping to stare blurrily at the half-finished window display that shines out now from Le Rocher de Montmartre like a magic-lantern show.

Never underestimate the power of a window display. The eyes are the windows of the soul, they say, and a display window should be the eyes of the shop, gleaming with promise and delight. The old display was pretty enough, with my red shoes filled with chocolates, but I’m aware that with Christmas approaching in giant strides, we must think of something more enchanting than mere footwear if we are to bring the customers in.

And so our window has become an Advent calendar, draped with scrap silk and lit with a single yellow lantern. The calendar itself is made out of an antique dolls’ house that I found in the
marché aux puces
. Too old to attract a child, too decrepit to be of any interest to a collector – its roof badly glued together, its front cracked and mended with masking tape – it was precisely what I had been looking for.

It is large – large enough to fill the window – with a sloping, bevelled roof and a painted façade with four lift-out panels to spy inside. For the present, all the panels are shut, and I have placed blinds in the windows, under which we can just glimpse the comforting golden light from inside.

‘Wow,’ said Vianne when she saw me at work. ‘What is it, a Nativity?’

I grinned. ‘Not quite. It’s a surprise.’

So today I worked as fast as I could, shielding the window from prying eyes with the help of a large piece of red-and-gold sari silk behind which the transformation was to occur.

I started with the scenery. Around the house, I constructed a miniature garden: a lake made from a swatch of blue silk with chocolate ducks floating across it; a river; a path made from coloured sugar crystals, lined with trees and bushes made from tissue paper and pipe-cleaners; everything dusted with icing-sugar snow, and with multicoloured sugar mice running out of the Advent house like something out of a fairytale . . .

It took me the best part of the morning to put all the scenery in place. Just before twelve Nico came in with Alice – they seem to be inseparable now – and stayed to admire the window. He bought another box of his macaroons, while Alice watched wide-eyed as I piped the repairs and improvements to the house’s façade with a thin-nozzled icing-sugar bag.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Alice. ‘It’s better than the Galeries Lafayette.’

I have to admit it’s a splendid confection. Part-house, part-cake, with sugar fluting around the windows, sugar gargoyles on the roof, sugar pillars around the doors and a neat little cap of snow on each window-ledge and on the bevelled chimney-tops.

At lunchtime, I called Vianne in to look.

‘D’you like it?’ I said. ‘It’s not finished yet, but – what do you think?’

For a while, she said nothing at all. But her colours had already told me everything I needed to know, flaring so
bright they almost filled the room. And were there tears in her eyes? Yes. I thought perhaps there were.

‘Fabulous,’ she said at last. ‘Just – fabulous.’

I feigned modesty. ‘Oh, you know . . .’

‘I mean it, Zozie. You’ve helped me so much.’ I thought she looked troubled. As well she might; the sign of Ehecatl is a powerful one – speaking of journeys, change, the wind – and she must sense it working around her, maybe even
in
her now (my
mendiants
are special in so many ways), its chemistries mingling with her own, changing, becoming volatile—

‘And I don’t even pay you a decent wage,’ she said.

‘Pay me in kind,’ I suggested, grinning. ‘All the chocolates I can eat.’

Vianne shook her head, frowning, seeming to listen for something outside; but the fog had swallowed any sound. ‘I owe you so much,’ she went on at last. ‘And I’ve never done a thing for you—’

She stopped, as if she’d heard a noise, or had an idea so arresting that it temporarily robbed her of speech. That’ll be the
mendiants
again; her favourites; reminding her of happier times . . .

‘I know,’ she said, her face brightening. ‘You could move in here. Move in with us. There’s Madame Poussin’s old rooms. No one’s using them just now. It isn’t much, but it’s better than a bed-and-breakfast. You could stay with us, eat with us – the kids would love it – we don’t need the space – and at Christmas, when we move out . . .’

Her face fell, but just a little.

‘I’d be in the way,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘You wouldn’t. I promise. We’d work all hours. You’d be doing us a favour.’

‘What about Thierry?’ I said.

‘What about him?’ said Vianne with a touch of defiance. ‘We’re doing what he wants, aren’t we? Moving into Rue de la Croix? Why shouldn’t you stay with us till then? And when we move out, you can look after the shop. Make sure everything’s all right. He practically suggested it anyway – he said I’d need a manager.’

I seemed to consider it awhile.
Is Thierry getting impatient?
I thought. Has he shown her his wilder side? I have to say I’d suspected as much – and now that Roux has turned up again she needs to keep them both at arm’s length, at least until she makes up her mind . . .

A chaperone. That’s what she needs. And what better choice than her friend Zozie?

‘But you’ve only just met me,’ I told her at last. ‘I could be anyone.’

She laughed. ‘No, you couldn’t.’

Shows what you know
.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a deal.’

Once more, I was in.