The Lollipop Shoes (50 page)

She wouldn’t have cherished you
, she’d said.
She was careless. She let you go
.

But the guilt of it had followed her across continents, a guilt that eventually turned to fear. That was my mother’s real weakness – that fear – and it kept her running all her
life. Fear that someone would take me away. Fear that one day I’d learn the truth. Fear that she had been wrong all those years ago, that she had cheated a stranger out of her life, and that in the end she would have to pay—

The story goes like this.

A widow-woman had a daughter whom she cherished above all things. They lived in a cottage in a wood, and though they were poor, they were as happy together as any two people have ever been, before or since.

In fact they were so happy that the Queen of Hearts, who lived nearby, heard of them and was envious, and set out to collect the daughter’s heart, for although she had a thousand lovers and more than a hundred thousand slaves, she was always hungry for more, and she knew that she could never rest knowing that there was a single heart out there that had been given to another.

And so the Queen of Hearts made her way quietly to the widow’s cottage, and as she hid among the trees, she saw the daughter playing alone. For the cottage was a long way from even the nearest village, and there were no playmates to share the daughter’s game.

So the Queen, who was no queen at all, but a powerful witch, changed her shape to that of a little black cat, and strolled out, tail high, from between the trees.

And all day the child played with the cat, which gambolled and chased pieces of string and climbed trees and came at her call and ate from her hand and was undoubtedly the most playful and picture-perfect of pretty kittycats any child had ever seen—

But for all its purring and preening, the cat could not steal the daughter’s heart, and when night came, the child went indoors to where her mother had laid dinner on the
table, and the Queen of Hearts yowled her displeasure to the night, and ripped out the hearts of many small nocturnal creatures, but was not satisfied, and wanted the child’s heart even more than before . . .

So on the second day, she changed into a handsome young man, and lay in wait for the widow’s daughter as she searched for her kittycat in the woods. Now the daughter had never seen a young man, except from afar, on market-days. And this one was glorious in every way – black hair, blue eyes, fresh as a girl, but all boy – and she forgot about the kittycat, and they walked, and talked, and laughed, and ran together through the forest like fallow deer in season.

But when night came, and he dared steal a kiss, the daughter’s heart still belonged to her mother, and that night the Queen hunted deer and cut out their hearts, and ate them raw – but still she was not satisfied, and longed for the child more than ever.

So, on the morning of the third day, the witch did not change her shape, but instead stayed close to the house and watched. And as the child went off in vain to search for her friend of the previous day, the Queen of Hearts kept her eyes fixed on the child’s mother. She watched as the mother washed clothes in the stream, and knew that she could do it better. She watched as the mother cleaned the house, and knew that she could do it better. And as night fell, she took the shape of the mother herself – her smiling face, her gentle hands – and when the daughter came back home, there were
two
mothers there to greet her . . .

What on earth could the mother do? The Queen of Hearts had studied her, had copied every gesture, every mannerism too flawlessly to be caught out. Everything she
did, the witch could do better, faster, more perfectly—

And so the mother set the table with another place for the visitor.

‘
I’ll
make dinner,’ said the Queen. ‘I know all your favourites.’

‘We’ll
both
make dinner,’ said the mother. ‘And then my daughter will decide.’

‘
My
daughter,’ said the witch. ‘And I think
I
know the way to her heart.’

Well, the mother was a good cook. And she had never worked harder over a meal – not at Easter, not at Yule. But the witch had magic on her side, and her glamours were very powerful. The mother knew all the child’s favourites – but the Queen knew those she had yet to discover, and she set them effortlessly on the table, one by one, throughout the meal.

They began with a winter soup, lovingly cooked in a copper pot with a shin-bone left over from Sunday lunch—

But the witch brought in a light
bouillon
, simmered with the sweetest of baby shallots and scented with ginger and lemongrass and served with croutons so crisp and small that they seemed to vanish in her mouth—

The mother brought in the second course. Sausages and potato mash; a comforting dish the child always loved, with sticky onion marmalade—

But the witch brought in a brace of quail that had been gorged on ripe figs all their lives, now roasted and stuffed with chestnuts and
foie gras
and served with a
coulis
of pomegranate—

Now the mother was close to despair. She brought dessert: a stout apple pie, made to her mother’s recipe.

But the witch had made a
pièce montée
: a pastelcoloured sugared dream of almonds, summer fruit and pastries like a puff of air, all scented with rose and marshmallow cream, and served with a glass of Château d’Yquem
—

And the mother said: ‘All right. You win,’ as her heart just snapped clean in two, with a sound like popcorn in the pan. And the witch smiled and reached for her prey—

But the daughter did not return her embrace. Instead she fell to her knees on the floor.

‘Mother, don’t die. I
know
it’s you.’

And the Queen of Hearts gave a scream of rage as she realized that even now, in the moment of her triumph, the child’s heart was still not hers. And she screamed so loudly and so furiously that her head exploded like a fair-day balloon, and the Queen of Hearts in her terminal wrath became the queen of nothing at all.

As for the ending of the tale—

Well, that depended on my mother’s mood. In one version, the mother survives, and she and the child live alone for ever in their cottage in the wood. On darker days, the mother dies, and the child is left alone in her grief. And there is a third version, where the impostor, in a final twist, foresees the mother’s broken heart and collapses herself, thus prompting a vow of eternal love from the child while the real mother stands by, unable to speak, discarded and powerless as the witch begins to feed—

I never told Anouk that tale. It frightened me then as it frightens me now. In stories we find the truth, and though no one outside of a fairytale ever died of a broken heart, the Queen of Hearts is very real, though she does not always go by that name.

But we’ve faced her before, Anouk and I. She’s the wind that blows at the turn of the year. She’s the sound of one hand clapping. She’s the lump in your mother’s breast. She’s the absent look in your daughter’s eyes. She’s the cry of the cat. She’s in the confessional. She’s hiding inside the black
piñata
. But most of all she is simply Death; greedy old Mictecacihuatl herself, Santa Muerte, the Eater of Hearts, most terrible of the Kindly Ones—

And now it’s time to face her again. To pick up my weapons – such as they are – and to stand and fight for the life we have made. But for that I need to be Vianne Rocher, if ever I can find her again. The Vianne Rocher who faced down the Black Man at the
Grand Festival du Chocolat
. The Vianne Rocher who knows everyone’s favourites. The peddler of sweet dreams, small temptations, treats, trinkets, tricks, petty indulgences and everyday magic—

If only I can find her in time.

8

Saturday, 22nd December

IT MUST HAVE
snowed during the night. Just a thin scattering for now, turning to grey slush nearly at once. Still, it’s a start. There’ll be more soon. You can already see it in the clouds; clouds so heavy and dark below the Butte that they’re practically touching the church spires. Clouds only
look
lighter than air; but actually the water in just one of those clouds could weigh millions of tonnes, Jean-Loup says; that’s a whole multi-storey full of cars parked up there, just waiting to fall, today or tomorrow, in tiny little flakes of snow.

On the Butte, it’s Christmas in a big way. There’s a fat Santa Claus sitting at the terrace of Chez Eugène, drinking
café-crème
and scaring the kids. The artists are out in force too, and there’s a little band of college students playing hymns and Christmas songs just outside the church. I’d arranged to meet Jean-Loup this morning, and Rosette wanted to see the Nativity (again), so I took her out for a little walk while Maman
worked and Zozie went out to do some shopping.

Neither of them mentioned what happened last night, but they both looked OK this morning, so I guess Zozie must have sorted things out. Maman was wearing her red dress, the one that always makes her feel good, and she was talking about recipes, and everything sounded so cheerful and right—

Jean-Loup was waiting in Place du Tertre when I finally got there with Rosette. Everything takes time with Rosette – anorak, boots, hat and gloves – and it was nearly eleven by the time we got there. Jean-Loup had his camera – the big one with the special lens – and he was taking pictures of people going by: foreign tourists; children watching the Nativity; the fat Santa smoking a cigar—

‘Hey! It’s you!’ That was Jean-Louis with his sketch pad, trying to pick up a tourist girl. He chooses them for their handbags, you know – he has a sliding scale of tariffs, based entirely on the style of the bag – and he can always spot a fake.

‘Fakes never fork out,’ he says. ‘But show me a nice Louis Vuitton and I’m in.’

Jean-Loup laughed when I told him that. Rosette laughed too, though I don’t think she really understood. She likes Jean-Loup and his camera.
Picture
, she signs, when she sees him now. She means the digital camera, of course; she likes to pose for a photograph, and see it at once in the little box.

Then Jean-Loup suggested going down to the cemetery to see what was left of last night’s snow, so we went down the steps by the funicular and walked along to Rue Caulaincourt.

‘Can you see the cats, Rosette?’ I said as we looked down
from the metal bridge into the cemetery. Someone must have been feeding them because there were a couple of dozen of them, sitting around the entrance, where the lower level of the cemetery leads to a big round flower bed with long, straight avenues of tombs branching out like compass-points.

We went down the steps to Avenue Rachel. It’s dark down there, with the bridge overhead and the heavy clouds pressing down. Jean-Loup had said there’d be more snow here, and he was right – every tomb had its white beret – though it was wet and pocked with holes, and you could tell it wouldn’t last. But Rosette loves snow; she kept picking bits up between her fingers and laughing silently when it disappeared.

And then I saw him waiting for us. I wasn’t even really surprised. Sitting very still next to Dalida’s tomb, a carved figure all in grey, with only the pale plume of his breath to show that he was alive at all.

‘Roux!’ I said.

He grinned at me.

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

‘Well, thanks for the welcome.’ He smiled at Rosette and pulled out something from his pocket. ‘Happy birthday, Rosette,’ he said.

It was a whistle, made from a single piece of wood and polished to a silky shine.

Rosette took it and put it in her mouth.

‘Not that way. This way.’ He demonstrated, blowing into the opening. It made a high
squeeee
sound, much louder than you’d have expected, and Rosette’s face opened in a big, happy smile. ‘She likes it,’ said Roux. He looked at Jean-Loup. ‘And you must be the photographer.’

‘Where have you been all this time?’ I said. ‘People have been looking for you.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I checked out.’ He picked up Rosette and tickled her. She put out a hand to touch his hair.

‘Be serious, Roux.’ I frowned at him. ‘The police were here, and everything. They’re saying you forged a cheque. I told them it was a mistake, that you’d never do a thing like that—’

Maybe it was the light, or something, but I couldn’t make out his reaction to that. The December light, with the street-lamps on early, and that splatter of snow against the stone making everything else look darker still. Anyway, I just couldn’t see. His colours were burning very low, and I couldn’t tell if he was scared, or angry, or even surprised.

‘Is that what Vianne thinks?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Her faith in me is awesome, isn’t it?’ He shook his head ruefully, but I could see he was grinning. ‘Still, I hear the wedding’s off. Can’t say I’m heartbroken about
that
.’

‘You should have been a spy,’ I said. ‘How d’you find all that out so fast?’

He shrugged. ‘People talk. I listen,’ he said.