The Lollipop Shoes (56 page)

And she shoots me a smile like a falling star, and I can’t speak, can’t move, captivated like the rest of them. The fascination is so intense that I could almost believe I’ve been drugged; my head feels like a hive of bees; colours shift around the room, making it spin like a carousel—

Roux puts out his arm to steady me. He alone seems not to share in the general feeling of consternation. I’m vaguely aware of Madame Rimbault – Jean-Loup’s mother – staring at me. Her face is pinched with disapproval beneath the dyed hair. She very clearly wants to leave – and yet she too is mesmerized, caught up in Zozie’s narrative.

Zozie smiles and carries on. ‘You might say I’m an adventurer. All my life I’ve lived on my wits; gambling,
stealing, begging, fraud. I’ve never known anything else. No friends, no place I liked enough to stay . . .’

She pauses, and I can
feel
the glamour in the air, all incense and sparkling dust, and I know that she can talk them round, can twist them round her little finger.

‘But here,’ she says, ‘I found a home. I found people who like me, people who like me for who I am. I thought I could reinvent myself here – but old habits die hard. I’m sorry, Thierry. I’ll pay you back.’

And as their voices begin to rise, confused and distressed and wavering, the quiet Madame now faces Thierry; Madame, whose name I don’t even know, but whose face is pale now with something she can barely articulate, her eyes like agates in that hard face.

‘How much does she owe you,
monsieur
?’ she says. ‘I’ll pay it myself, with interest.’

He stares at her, incredulous. ‘Why?’ he says.

Madame straightens up to her full height. It isn’t much; beside Thierry she looks like a quail facing down a bear.

‘I’m sure you have a right to complain,’ she says in her nasal Paris voice. ‘But I have good reason to believe that Vianne Rocher, whoever she is, is far more my concern than yours.’

‘How so?’ says Thierry.

‘I’m her mother,’ she says.

12

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.05 p.m
.

AND NOW THE
silence that has bound her in its icy cocoon splits open in a broken cry. Vianne, no longer pale but flushed with
pulque
and confusion, now steps out to face Madame in the little semicircle that has gathered around her.

A bunch of mistletoe hangs above their heads, and I feel a wild, mad, relentless urge to run up to her and kiss her right there on the mouth. She’s so easy to manipulate – like all of them – and now I can almost taste the prize, can feel it in the rhythm of my blood, can hear it like surf on a distant beach, and it tastes so sweet, like chocolate—

The sign of One Jaguar has many properties. True invisibility is, of course, impossible outside of fairytales, but the eye and the brain can be fooled in ways that cameras and film cannot, and it is easy enough, while their attention is focused on Madame, to creep away – not
quite
unnoticed – to collect the case I have so neatly packed.

Anouk followed, as I knew she would. ‘Why did you say that?’ she demanded. ‘Why did you say you were Vianne Rocher?’

I shrugged. ‘What do I have to lose? I change my name like my coat, Anouk. I never stay in one place for long. That’s the difference between us. I could never live like that. I could never be respectable. I don’t care what they think of me – but your mother has so much to lose. There’s Roux, and Rosette, and the shop, of course—’

‘But what about that woman?’ she said.

So I filled her in on the sorry tale: the child in the car seat; the little cat charm. Turns out Vianne never mentioned it. Can’t say I’m really surprised.

‘But if she knew who her mother was,’ said Anouk, ‘then couldn’t she have found her again?’

‘Perhaps she was afraid,’ I said. ‘Or perhaps she felt closer to her adopted mother.
You choose your family
, Nanou. Isn’t that what she always says? And perhaps . . .’ I faked a pause.

‘And what?’

I smiled. ‘People like us are different. We have to stick together, Nanou. We have to choose our family. After all,’ I told her slyly, ‘if she can lie to you about this, then can you be sure
you
weren’t stolen, too?’

I left her to think about that for a while. In the other room, Madame was still talking, her voice rising and falling in the rhythms of the natural storyteller. She and her daughter have that in common; but it’s not the time to hang around. I have my case; my coat; my papers. As always, I travel light. From my pocket I bring out Anouk’s present; a small package wrapped in red.

‘I don’t want you to go, Zozie.’

‘Nanou, I really have no choice.’

The present gleams among the folds of red tissue paper. It’s a bracelet; a slim band made of silver, lustrous and new. By contrast, the single charm that hangs on it is dark with age – a tiny blackened silver cat.

She knows what it means. A sob escapes her.

‘Zozie, no—’

‘I’m sorry, Anouk.’

Quickly I cross the deserted kitchen. Plates and glasses neatly stacked along with the remains of the feast. On the stove, a pot of hot chocolate simmers; its steam is the only sign of life.

Try me. Taste me
, it implores.

It’s a small enough glamour, an everyday charm, and Anouk has withstood it for the last four years, but all the same it pays to be safe, and I turn off the heat under the pot as I make my way towards the back door.

With one hand I carry my case. With the other I cast the sign of Mictecacihuatl like a handful of cobwebs in the air. Death, and a gift. The essential seduction. More potent by far than chocolate.

And now I turn to smile at her. Outside, and the darkness will swallow me whole. The night wind flirts with my red dress. My scarlet shoes are like blood on the snow.

‘Nanou,’ I say. ‘We’ve all got a choice. Yanne or Vianne. Annie or Anouk. Changing Wind or the Hurakan. It’s not always easy, being like us. If you want easy, you’d better stay here. But if you want to ride that wind—’

For a moment she seems to hesitate, but I already know I’ve won.

I won the moment I took on your name, and with it, the call of the Changing Wind. You see, Vianne, I never meant
to stay. I never wanted your
chocolaterie
. I never wanted any part of the sad little life you’ve made for yourself.

But Anouk, with her gifts, is invaluable. So young and yet so talented, and most of all, so easy to manipulate. We could be in New York by tomorrow, Nanou, or London, or Moscow, or Venice, or even good old Mexico City. There are plenty of conquests waiting out there for Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk, and won’t we both be fabulous; won’t we go through them all like December wind?

Anouk is watching me, mesmerized. It all makes so much sense to her now that she wonders why she never saw it before. A fair exchange; a life for a life.

And am I not your mother now? Better than life and twice as much fun? Why would you need Yanne Charbonneau? Why would you need
anyone
?

‘But what about Rosette?’ she protests.

‘Rosette has a family now.’

A moment while she thinks about that. Yes, Rosette will have a family. Rosette does not need to choose. Rosette has Yanne. Rosette has Roux—

Another sob escapes her. ‘
Please
—’

‘Come on, Nanou. It’s what you want. Magic, adventure, life on the edge—’

She takes a step, then hesitates. ‘You promise you’ll never lie to me?’

‘Never have. Never will.’

Another pause, and the lingering scent of Vianne’s hot chocolate pulls at me, saying
try me, taste me
in its smoky plaintive dying voice.

Is that the best you can do, Vianne?

But Anouk still seems to hesitate.

She’s looking at my bracelet; at the silver charms that are hanging there: coffin, shoes, ear of maize, hummingbird, snake, skull, monkey, mouse—

She frowns, as if she’s trying to remember something that’s just on the tip of her tongue. And her eyes brim with tears as she looks up at the copper pan cooling on the stove.

Try me. Taste me
. A last sad fading perfume, like a ghost of childhood on the air.

Try me. Taste me.
A skinned knee; a small damp palm with chocolate dust imprinted into lifeline and heartline.

Taste me. Test me
. A memory of both of them lying in bed, a picture book on the blanket between them, Anouk laughing wildly at something Vianne said . . .

Once more I cast the sign of Mictecacihuatl, old Lady Death, the Gobbler of Hearts, like black fireworks into her path. It’s getting late; Madame’s tale will be done and very soon they will miss us both.

Anouk looks dazed, watching the stove with a look of one half in a dream. Through the Smoking Mirror I can now see the cause: a small grey shape sitting by the pan, a blur that might be whiskers, a tail—

‘Well?’ I ask. ‘Are you coming or not?’

13

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.05 p.m
.

‘
I LIVED DOWN
the hall from Jeanne Rocher.’ her voice had the typical clipped vowels of the native Parisienne, like Stiletto heels rapping out the words. ‘She was a little older than me, and she earned her money doing Tarot readings and helping people to quit smoking. I went to her once, a couple of weeks before my daughter was taken. She told me I’d been thinking of having her adopted. I called her a liar. All the same, it was true.’

She carried on, her expression bleak. ‘It was a bedsit flat in Neuilly-Plaisance. Half an hour from the centre of Paris. I had an old 2CV, two waitressing jobs at local cafés and the occasional handout from Sylviane’s father, who by then I’d realized would never leave his wife. I was twenty-one and my life was over. Childcare ate what little I earned; I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t
love
her . . .’

The image of that little cat charm flashes briefly through
my mind. There’s something touching about it, somehow, the silver charm with its lucky red ribbon. Did Zozie steal that too? Perhaps she did. Perhaps that’s how she fooled Madame Caillou, her harsh face softened now with the memory of her loss.

‘It was two weeks later that she disappeared. I left her for two minutes, that’s all – Jeanne Rocher must have been watching me, biding her time. When I thought to look for her she’d packed up and left, and there was no proof. But I always wondered—’ She turned to me, her face alight. ‘And then I met your friend Zozie, with her little girl, and I knew, I
knew
—’

I looked at the stranger opposite me. An ordinary woman of fifty or so, looking rather older, perhaps, with her heavy hips and pencilled brows. A woman I might have passed a thousand times in the street without thinking for a moment that there could be any possible kinship between us, now standing there with that look of terrible hope on her face, and
this
is the trap, I know it is, and my name is not my soul, I know.

But I can’t, I just
can’t
let her believe—

‘Please, Madame.’ I smiled at her. ‘Someone has played a cruel joke. Zozie’s not your daughter,’ I said. ‘Whatever she may have claimed, she’s not. And as for Vianne Rocher—’

I paused. Roux’s face was expressionless, but his hand found mine and held it tight. Thierry’s eyes were on me too. And I knew at that moment I had no choice. A man who casts no shadow, I know, isn’t really a man at all, and a woman who gives up her name—

‘I remember a red plush elephant. A blanket with flowers. I think it was pink. And a bear with one eye made
from a black button. And a little silver cat charm tied with a piece of red ribbon—’

Now Madame was watching me, eyes bright under her pencilled brows.

‘They travelled with me for years,’ I said. ‘The elephant went pink with age. I wore it down to the stuffing inside and still I wouldn’t let her throw it away. They were the only toys I really had, and I carried them in my backpack with their heads sticking out so they could have a chance to breathe—’

A silence. Her breath, a rasp in her throat.