The Lollipop Shoes (31 page)

Roux frowned, and I could tell that I was finally getting to him. I could see doubt in his colours, and, more promisingly, the first flowering of anger.

‘So why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t she write?’

‘Maybe she was afraid,’ I said.

‘Afraid? Of
him
?’

‘Perhaps,’ I said.

Now I could see him thinking hard, head lowered, eyes
creased in concentration. For some strange reason, he doesn’t trust me; and yet I know he’ll take the bait. For her sake, for Vianne Rocher.

‘I’ll go and see her. Talk to her—’

‘That would be a big mistake.’

‘Why?’

‘She doesn’t want to see you yet. You have to give her time. You can’t just turn up out of the blue and expect her to make a choice.’

His eyes told me that was precisely what he’d expected.

I put a hand on his arm. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to her. I’ll try and make her see things your way. But no more visits, no letters, no calls. Trust me on this.’

‘Why should I?’ he said.

Well, I knew he wouldn’t be easy, but this was getting ridiculous. I allowed an edge to enter my voice. ‘Why? Because I’m her friend, and I care what happens to her and the kids. And if you’d just stop thinking about your wounded feelings for a minute, you’d see why she needs some time to think. I mean, where have you been for the past four years? And how does she know you won’t take off again? Thierry isn’t perfect, of course, but he’s here, and he’s dependable, which is more than can be said of you.’

Some folk respond better to abrasiveness than charm. Roux is obviously one of these, because he sounded more civil then than at any other time he’d spoken to me.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Zozie.’

‘So you’ll do as I say? Otherwise, there’s no point in me even trying to help you.’

He nodded.

‘You mean it?’

‘Yeah.’

I gave a sigh. The hard part was done.

A pity, in a way, I thought. In spite of everything, I find him rather attractive. But for every favour the gods bestow, there has to be a sacrifice. And of course, by the end of the month I’ll be asking for a significant favour . . .

7

Wednesday, 5th December

SUZE WAS BACK
again today. Wearing a beanie hat instead of that scarf and trying to make up for lost time. Heads together with Chantal at lunch, and after that it was all out with the lame comments and the
where’s your boyfriend
and the stupid
Annie’s It
games.

Not that there’s anything remotely fun about
that
any more. Now it’s not just halfway mean: it’s mean all the way, with Sandrine and Chantal telling everybody about last week’s visit to the shop, making it sound like a cross between a hippie den and a junk yard, and laughing like crazy at everything.

To make it worse, Jean-Loup was ill, and I was back to being It on my own. Not that I care about that, of course. But it isn’t fair; we’ve worked so hard, Maman and Zozie and Rosette and me – and now there’s Chantal and Co. making us sound like a bunch of losers.

Normally I wouldn’t have cared. But things are getting so much better for us, with Zozie moving in with us, and
business so good, and the shop full of customers every day, and Roux coming back like that, out of the blue—

But it’s been four days, and he hasn’t made an appearance yet. I couldn’t stop thinking about him at school, and wondering where he’s keeping his boat, or whether he lied to us about that and he’s just sleeping under a bridge somewhere, or in some old deserted house, the way he did in Lansquenet after Monsieur Muscat burnt his boat.

And in lessons I couldn’t concentrate; and Monsieur Gestin shouted at me for daydreaming, and Chantal and Co. giggled at that, and I didn’t even have Jean-Loup to talk to.

And it got a lot worse; because after school as I stood in the queue next to Claude Meunier and Mathilde Chagrin, Danielle came up to me with that fake-concerned expression she puts on so often, and said: ‘Is it true your little sister’s retarded?’

Chantal and Suze were standing nearby, looking nicely poker-faced. I could see it in their colours, though, the way they were trying to set me up; and I could see they were so close to laughing that they were nearly bursting with it—

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I made my voice expressionless. No one knows about Rosette – or so I thought until today. And then I remembered one day with Suze, playing with Rosette in the shop . . .

‘That’s what I’ve heard,’ said Danielle. ‘Your sister’s a retard. Everyone knows.’

Well, so much for
Best Friends
, I thought. And the pink enamelled pendant, and the promise she’d made never to tell, cross your heart and hope to—

I glared at Suze in her hot-pink beanie (redheads should
never
wear hot pink).

‘Some people ought to mind their own business,’ I said, loud enough for them all to hear.

Danielle smirked. ‘It’s true, then,’ she said, and her colours brightened greedily, like hot coals in a sudden draught.

Something in me flared as well.
Don’t you dare
, I told her fiercely.
Anyone says another word
—

‘Sure it’s true,’ said Suze. ‘I mean, she’s like, what is she, four, or something, and she can’t even talk yet, or eat properly. My mum says she’s a mong. She
looks
like a mong, anyway.’

‘No she doesn’t,’ I said quietly.

‘Yes she does. She’s an ugly retard, just like you.’

Suze just laughed. Chantal joined in. Soon they were chanting –
retard, retard
– and I could see Mathilde Chagrin staring at me with those pale, anxious eyes and suddenly—

BAM!

I don’t quite know what happened then. It was so fast, like a cat that suddenly goes from purring asleep to hissing and scratching in the space of a second. I know that I forked my fingers at her, as Zozie did in the English tea-shop. I don’t quite know what I meant to do; but I felt it fly from my hand, somehow, as if I’d actually
thrown
something, a little stone, or a spinning disc of something that burnt.

In any case, it acted fast: I heard Suzanne give a scream, then suddenly she was grabbing at her hot-pink beanie, pulling it off her head.

‘Ow! Ow!’

‘What’s wrong?’ said Chantal.

‘It itches!’ wailed Suze. She was scratching her head furiously; I could see pink patches of skin beneath what was left of her hair. ‘God, it
itches
!’

I felt sick all of a sudden, weak and sick, the way I felt the other night with Zozie. But the worst of it was, I wasn’t sorry; instead I felt a kind of thrill, the kind you get when something bad happens, and it’s your fault, but no one knows.

‘What is it?’ Chantal was saying.

‘I don’t know!’ said Suzanne.

Danielle was looking all concerned, but fake, the way she’d looked at me before asking if Rosette was retarded, and Sandrine was making little squeaking noises – of sympathy or excitement, I couldn’t tell.

Then Chantal began to scratch
her
head.

‘G-got n-nits, Chantal?’ said Claude Meunier.

The back of the queue laughed at that.

Then Danielle began to do the same.

It was as if a cloud of itching powder had suddenly descended upon the three of them. Itching powder, or something worse. Chantal looked angry, then alarmed. Suzanne was almost in hysterics. And for a moment it felt so
good
—

A memory came back to me then, of a time I was very small. A day by the sea; paddling in my swimsuit; Maman sitting with a book on the sand. A boy who splashed me with sea water and made my eyes sting. As he passed by, I threw a stone – a small one; a pebble – expecting to miss.

It was just an accident—

The little boy crying, holding his head. Maman running
towards me, dismay in her face. That sick sense of shock –
an accident
—

Images of broken glass; a scraped knee; a stray dog yelping under a bus.

Those
are accidents, Nanou
.

Slowly, I started to back away. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. It was funny – funny in the way a horrible thing can still be funny. And it still felt good, in that horrible way—

‘What the hell is it?’ yelled Chantal.

Whatever it was, it was potent, I thought. Even itching powder wouldn’t have worked as dramatically. But I couldn’t quite see what was happening. There were too many people in the way, and the queue had dissolved into a kind of mass, everyone wanting to see what was going on.

I didn’t even try. I knew.

Suddenly I needed to see Zozie. She’d know what to do, I thought, and she wouldn’t give me the third degree. I didn’t want to wait for the bus so I took the Métro back instead, and ran all the way from Place de Clichy. I was completely out of breath when I got in; Maman was in the kitchen fixing Rosette’s snack and I swear Zozie knew before I even said a word.

‘What’s wrong, Nanou?’

I looked at her. She was wearing jeans and her lollipop shoes, looking redder and higher and shinier than ever with their sparkly stack heels. Seeing them made me feel better somehow, and I collapsed into one of the pink leopard chairs with an enormous sigh of relief.

‘Chocolate?’

‘No thanks.’

She poured me a Coke. ‘That bad?’ she said, watching me drink it all in one go, so fast that bubbles came out of my nose. ‘Here, have another, and tell me what’s wrong.’

I told her then, but quietly enough for Maman not to overhear. I had to stop twice, once when Nico came in with Alice, and once more when Laurent came in for a coffee and sat for nearly half an hour complaining about all the work to be done on Le P’tit Pinson, and how impossible it was to get a plumber at this time of year, and the immigrant problem, and all the usual things Laurent complains about.

By the time he’d gone it was time to close and Maman was cooking dinner. Zozie put out the lights in the shop so I could see the Advent house. The Pied Piper has gone now, replaced by a choir of chocolate angels singing in the sugar snow. It looks so beautiful, I thought. But the house is still a mystery. Doors shut, curtains drawn; only a single fairy-light shining out from an attic room.

‘Can I see inside?’ I said.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Zozie said. ‘Why don’t you come to my room? Then we can finish our little talk.’

Slowly I followed her upstairs. On each narrow step in front of me, the lollipop shoes went
tak-tak-tak
on their fabulous heels, like someone knocking at a door, asking me, begging me to let them in.

8

Thursday, 6th December

THIS MORNING, FOR
the third day running, the mist hangs like a Sail over Montmartre. They’re promising snow in a day or two; but for today the silence is eerie, swallowing the usual sounds of traffic and the footsteps of the pedestrians on the cobbles outside. It might be a hundred years ago, with frock-coated ghosts looming out of the fog—

Or it might be the morning of my last day of school, the day of my emancipation from St Michael’s-on-the-Green, the day I first realized that life – that
lives
– are nothing but dead letters on the wind, to be picked up, collected, burnt or thrown away whenever the opportunity demands.

You’ll learn that soon enough, Anouk. I know you better than you know yourself; there’s a complex potential for anger and hate behind that good-little-girl façade, just as there was in the Girl Who Was It – the girl who was
I
– all those years ago.

But everything needs a catalyst. Sometimes it’s a little thing; a featherweight; a flick of the fingers. Some
piñatas
are tougher than others. But everyone has a pressure point; and the box, once opened, cannot be shut.

Mine was a boy. His name was Scott McKenzie. He was seventeen; blond, athletic, unblemished. He was new to St Michael’s-on-the-Green; otherwise he would have known better from the start, and would have avoided the Girl Who Was It in favour of some more worthy candidate for his affections.

Instead, he chose me – at least for a time – and that was how it all began. Not the most original start, though it ended in flames, as these things should. I was sixteen, and with the aid of my System, I had made the most of myself. I was a little mousy, perhaps – the legacy of so many years of being the freak. But I had potential, even then. I was ambitious, resentful, nicely underhand. My methods were mainly practical, rather than occult. I had a working knowledge of poisons and herbs; I knew how to inflict violent stomach-aches on those who incurred my displeasure, and I soon learnt that a dash of itching powder in a fellow-pupil’s socks, or a squeeze of chilli oil in a mascara bottle could have a more instant and dramatic effect than any number of incantations.