The Lollipop Shoes (38 page)

I toned it down for Anouk, of course, omitting all mention of the bracelet, the black
piñata
or of my fiery farewell. I painted a touching picture of myself, alone and misunderstood, friendless upon the Paris streets; racked
with guilt, sleeping rough, living on nothing but magic and wits.

‘I had to be tough. I had to be brave. It’s hard, being alone at sixteen, but I managed to fend for myself somehow, and in time I learnt that there are two forces that can drive us. Two winds, if you like, blowing in opposite directions. One wind takes you to what you want. The other one drives you from what you fear. And people like us have to make a choice. To ride the wind, or to let it ride you.’

And now at last as the
piñata
splits open, lavishing bounty on the faithful, here comes the prize I have waited for, the ticket to not one life, but
two
—

‘Which one will you choose, Nanou?’ I say. ‘Fear or desire? The Hurakan, or Ehecatl? The Destroyer, or the Wind of Change?’

She fixes me with that blue-grey gaze, the colour of a stormcloud’s edge just as it begins to break. Through the Smoking Mirror I can see her colours shifting in the most turbulent of purples and blues.

And now I can see something else. An image, an icon, presented here with more clarity than an eleven-year-old child could possibly articulate. I see it for less than a second, but even so it is enough. It’s the Nativity scene on Place du Tertre, the mother, the father and the crib.

But in this version of the scene, the mother is wearing a red dress, and the father’s hair is the same colour—

And at last, I begin to understand. That’s why she wants this party so much; that’s why she lavishes so much attention on the little peg-dolls in the Advent house, grouping, positioning them with as much care and attention as she would have given the real thing.

Look at Thierry outside the house. He has no role to play in this strange re-enactment. Then there are the visitors – the Magi, the shepherds, the angels. Nico, Alice, Madame Luzeron, Jean-Louis, Paupaul, Madame Pinot. They serve as the Greek chorus: to give encouragement and support. Then there is the central group. Anouk, Rosette, Roux, Vianne—

What was the first thing she said to me?

Who died? My mother. Vianne Rocher.

I took it as a kind of joke, a child’s attempt to be provocative. But knowing Anouk a little better now, I begin to see how serious those seemingly flippant words might be. The old priest and the social worker were not the only casualties of that December wind, four years ago. Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk died just as surely on that day, and now she wants to bring them back—

How alike we are, Nanou.

You see, I too need another life. Françoise Lavery dogs me still. Tonight’s local paper showed her again, now otherwise known as Mercedes Desmoines and Emma Windsor, among other aliases, and showing two blurry pictures taken from CCTV. You see, Annie, I have Kindly Ones of my own, and they may be slow, but they are unwavering, and their pursuit of me now goes beyond irksome into something that almost threatens me.

How did they find out about Mercedes? And how did they catch up with Françoise so soon? And how long do you think it will be before even Zozie falls to their relentlessness?

Perhaps it’s time, I tell myself. Perhaps I’ve exhausted Paris at last. Glamours aside, perhaps the time has come
for me to take to another set of roads. But not as Zozie. Not any more.

If someone offered you a whole new life, wouldn’t you take it?

Of course you would.

And if that life could offer you adventure, riches and a child – not just any child, but this beautiful, promising, talented child, untouched as yet by the hand of karma, that sends every bad thought and questionable deed straight back at you with threefold strength – something to toss to the Kindly Ones when at last there’s nothing else—

Wouldn’t you, if you had the chance?

Wouldn’t you?

Of course you would.

3

Wednesday, 12th December

WELL, THAT’S MORE
than a week of lessons so far, and already she says she can see a change. I’ve been learning more of the Mexican stuff – names and stories and symbols and signs. Now I know how to raise the wind with Ehecatl, the Changing One; and how to invoke Tlaloc, for rain, and even how to call down the Hurakan to bring revenge on my enemies.

Not that I’m thinking of revenge. Chantal and Co. have been out of school ever since that day at the bus stop. Apparently they’ve all got it now. Some kind of ringworm, Monsieur Gestin says, but anyway, they have to stay at home until it gets better, in case they infect anyone else. You’d be amazed at the difference it makes to a class of thirty kids when the four nastiest people are away. But without Suzanne, Chantal, Sandrine and Danielle, it’s actually
nice
to be at school. No one’s It; no one laughs at Mathilde for being fat, and Claude actually answered a question in maths today without stuttering.

Today, in fact, I’ve been working on Claude. He’s really nice when you get to know him, although he stammers so badly most of the time that he hardly ever talks to anyone. But I managed to slip a piece of paper marked with a symbol into his pocket – One Jaguar, for bravery – and it might just be that the others are away, but already I think I can see a difference.

He’s more relaxed now; he sits up instead of slouching and although his stammer hasn’t actually gone, it didn’t sound too bad today. Sometimes it gets so bad that his words jam up completely and he goes red in the face and almost cries – and everyone’s embarrassed for him – even the teacher – and can’t look (except for Chantal and Co., of course), but today he talked more than he ever does normally, and that didn’t happen, not even once.

I talked to Mathilde as well today. She’s very shy, and she doesn’t talk much; wears big black sweaters to hide her shape; tries to be invisible, hoping that people will leave her alone. They never do; and she moves around with her head down, as if she’s afraid to catch someone’s eye, and it makes her look tubby and awkward and sad, so that no one sees that she’s got great skin – unlike Chantal, who’s getting spots – and her hair is really thick and beautiful, and with the right attitude, she could be, too—

‘You should try it,’ I told her. ‘Surprise yourself.’

‘Try what?’ said Mathilde, as if to say:
why are you wasting your time on me?

So I told her some of what Zozie told me. She listened, forgetting to look at the floor.

‘I couldn’t do
that
,’ she said at last, but I noticed a hopeful look in her eyes, and this morning at the bus stop I thought she looked different: straighter and more
confident, and for the first time since I’d known her, she was wearing something that wasn’t black. It was just an ordinary top, but dark red and not too baggy, and I said,
that’s nice
, and Mathilde looked confused, but pleased, and for the first time ever, went smiling to school.

All the same, it feels kind of weird. To be suddenly – well, not
popular
, exactly, but something like it, anyway; to have people look at you differently; be able to change the way they think . . .

How could Maman ever give that up? I wish I could ask her; but I know I can’t. I’d have to tell her about Chantal and Co.; and about the peg-dolls; and Claude and Mathilde; and Roux; and Jean-Loup—

Jean-Loup was back in school today, looking a bit pale, but cheerful enough. Turns out his illness was only a cold, but his heart thing makes him delicate, and even a cold can be serious. Still, today he was back, taking pictures again, watching the world through his camera. Jean-Loup takes pictures of everyone: teachers, the janitor, pupils, me. He takes them very fast, so that no one has time to change what they’re doing, and sometimes this gets him into trouble – especially with the girls, who want to be able to primp and pose—

‘And wreck the picture,’ said Jean-Loup.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Because a camera sees more than the naked eye.’

‘Even ghosts?’

‘Those too.’

Well, it’s funny, I thought; but he’s totally right. He’s talking about the Smoking Mirror and how it can show you things that you might not see in the normal way. He doesn’t know the old symbols, of course. But perhaps he’s
been taking pictures for so long that he’s learnt Zozie’s trick of focusing – of seeing things as they really are, and not the way people want them to be. That’s why he likes the cemetery; he’s looking for things the eye doesn’t see. Ghost-lights, the truth, or something like that.

‘So what do I look like, according to you?’

He flicked through his gallery of pictures and showed me a shot of myself, taken that Break just as I was running out into the yard.

‘It’s a bit blurry,’ I said – my arms and legs were all over the place – but my face was all right, and I was laughing.

‘It’s you,’ said Jean-Loup. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Well, I couldn’t figure out whether he was being big-headed or whether he’d paid me a compliment, so I just ignored it and looked at the rest.

There was Mathilde, looking sad and fat but really quite pretty underneath; and Claude talking to me without the slightest bit of a stammer; and Monsieur Gestin with a funny, unexpected look, as if he was trying to look stern when actually he was laughing inside; and then some pictures of the
chocolaterie
that Jean-Loup hadn’t downloaded yet, that he flicked through too fast to see.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that Maman?’

It was, with Rosette. I thought she looked old, and Rosette had moved, so that you couldn’t really see her face. And now I could see Zozie at her side – not looking like herself at all, with her mouth turned down, and an odd kind of something in the eyes—

‘Come on! We’ll be late!’ he said.

And then we were running for the bus, and off to the cemetery as usual, to feed the cats and to stroll in the lanes
under the trees with the brown leaves falling and the ghosts all around.

It was getting dark by the time we got there, with the tombs just shapes against the sky. Not much good for photographs – unless you use flash, which Jean-Loup calls ‘lame’ – but weird and gorgeous all the same with the Christmas lights further up the Butte strung out in a spider’s web of stars.

‘Most people never see all this.’

He was taking pictures of the sky, yellow and grey with the tombs against it like hulks in a derelict boatyard.

‘That’s why I like it now,’ he went on. ‘When it’s nearly dark, and folk have gone home, and you can really see that it’s a cemetery, and not just a park filled with famous people.’

‘They’ll close the gates pretty soon,’ I said.

They do that, you know, to stop vagrants sleeping there. Some still do, though. They climb the wall, or they hide away where the
gardien
doesn’t see them.

That’s what I thought he was, at first. A vagrant, getting ready to bunk down for the night, just a shadow behind one of the tombs, wearing one of those big overcoats and a woolly hat pulled over his hair. I touched Jean-Loup’s arm. He nodded at me.

‘Get ready to run.’

Not that I was really scared, or anything. I don’t think you’re in any more danger from a homeless person than from someone with a regular house. But no one knew where we were; it was dark; and I knew Jean-Loup’s mother would have a fit if she knew where he went after school most nights.

She thinks he goes to the chess club.

I don’t think she really knows him at all.

So anyway. There we were, ready to run if the man showed any sign of coming at us. And then he turned and I saw his face—

Roux?

But before I could call out his name, he was gone, slipping away between the tombs, quick as a cemetery cat and quiet as a ghost.

4

Thursday, 13th December

MADAME LUZERON CAME
in today, bringing some things for the Advent window. Toy furniture from her old dolls’ house, packed carefully in shoe-boxes lined with tissue paper. There’s a four-poster bed with embroidered hangings, and a dining-table and six chairs. There are lamps and rugs and a tiny gilt mirror, and several small china-faced dolls.