Then Jean-Louis and Paupaul joined the game, and Richard and Mathurin on their way to pétanque; and Madame Pinot, who would never have come in six months ago, but who Zozie calls by her first name (Hermine) and who casually asks for my usual. . . .
As the busy afternoon sped on, I was touched to see so many customers bringing in presents for Rosette. I’d forgotten that they must see her with Zozie, while I am in the back making chocolates, but even so, it was unexpected, reminding me of all the friends we have gained since Zozie joined us a month ago.
There was the wooden dog from Madame Luzeron; a painted green eggcup from Alice; a stuffed rabbit from Nico; a jigsaw from Richard and Mathurin; a drawing of a monkey from Jean-Louis and Paupaul. Even Madame Pinot dropped round with a yellow hairband for Rosette—and to put in an order for violet creams, for which she has an enthusiasm bordering on greed. Then Laurent Pinson came in as usual, to steal the sugar and to inform me with gleeful despondency that business was terrible everywhere, and that he’d just seen a Muslim woman in a full veil walking down the Rue des Trois Frères; and as he went out he dropped a package on the table, which, when opened, was found to contain a pink plastic charm bracelet that probably came with a teen magazine, but that Rosette loves uncritically, and refuses to remove, even at bathtime.
And then, just as we were about to close, the odd woman who was here yesterday came round again, bought another box of truffles, and left a present for Rosette. That surprised me first of all—she isn’t a regular of ours, and even Zozie doesn’t know her name—but when we opened the gift wrapping, our surprise was greater still. Inside there was a box containing a baby doll, not large but clearly antique, with a soft body and a porcelain face framed in a bonnet lined with fur. Rosette loves it, of course, but I couldn’t accept such a lavish gift from a stranger, and I packed the doll into its box, meaning to give it back to the woman when—and if—she returns.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Zozie. “It probably belonged to her kids, or something. Look at Madame Luzeron and her dollhouse furniture.”
I pointed out, “Those things are only on loan.”
“Come on, Yanne,” said Zozie. “You have to stop being so suspicious about everything. You have to give people a chance—”
Rosette pointed at the box. Baby, she signed.
“All right. Just for tonight.”
Rosette gave a silent crow.
Zozie smiled. “See ? It’s not so hard.”
All the same I can’t help feeling uneasy. Rarely does anything ever come free—there’s not a gift or a kindness that doesn’t have to be paid for in full in the end. Life has taught me that, at least. That’s why I am more cautious now. That’s why I keep the wind chimes over my door, to warn me of the Kindly Ones, those messengers of credit due—
Tonight Anouk came in from school as usual, with no indication of her presence but the scampering sound of her feet on the wooden stairs as she went to her room. I tried to remember the last time it was that she greeted me as she used to do, coming to find me in the kitchen with a hug and a kiss and a barrage of chatter. I tell myself that I’m being too sensitive. But there was a time when she could no more have forgotten my kiss than she could have forgotten Pantoufle—
Yes, right now I’d welcome even that. A glimpse of Pantoufle; a casual word. Some sign that the summer child I knew has not entirely disappeared. But for days now I have not seen him, and she has hardly spoken to me—not about Jean-Loup Rimbault, not about her friends from school, not about Roux, Thierry, or even about the party anymore; though I know how hard she has worked on it, writing invitations on pieces of card, each one decorated with a sprig of holly and a picture of a monkey, copying out menus, planning games.
And now I find myself watching her across the dinner table and wondering at how adult she looks, and how suddenly, troublingly beautiful, with her dark hair and her stormy eyes and the promise of cheekbones in her vivid face.
I find myself watching her with Rosette, seeing the graceful, studious way she bends her head over the yellow-iced birthday cake and the oddly touching smallness of Rosette’s hands in her bigger ones. Blow the candles, Rosette, she says. No, don’t dribble. Blow. Like this.
I find myself watching her with Zozie—
And oh, Anouk—it happens so fast—that sudden switch from light to shade, from being the center of someone’s world to being nothing but a detail in the border, a figure in the shadows, seldom studied, barely seen—
Back in the kitchen, late that night, I put her school clothes in the washing machine. For a moment I hold them to my face, as if they might retain some part of her that I have lost. They smell of the outside, and of the incense smoke from Zozie’s rooms, and of the malt-biscuity scent of her sweat. I feel like a woman searching her lover’s clothes for signs of infidelity—
And in the pocket of her jeans, I find something that she has forgotten to take out. It’s a doll made from a wooden clothes peg, the same kind of doll that she has been making for the window display. But looking at this one more closely, I can recognize who it’s meant to be; I can see the marks drawn on it in felt-tip pen, and the three red hairs tied around the waist, and if I narrow my eyes, then I can see the glow that surrounds it, so faint and so very familiar that I might almost have missed it otherwise. . . .
Once more I go to the Advent window, where tomorrow’s scene is already set. The door opens into the dining room, and everyone is gathered around the table, where a chocolate cake stands ready to be cut. There are tiny candles on the table, and tiny plates and glasses, and now that I look more carefully I can recognize almost everyone there—Fat Nico, Zozie, little Alice in her big boots, Madame Pinot with her crucifix, Madame Luzeron in her funeral coat, Rosette, myself, even Laurent—and Thierry, who has not been invited, standing under the snow-covered trees.
And all of them marked with that golden gleam—
Such a small thing—
Such a huge thing.
But there’s surely no harm in a game, I think. Games are how children make sense of the world; and stories, even the darkest of them, are the means with which they learn to cope—with loss, with cruelty, with death—
But there is more to this little tableau. The family-and-friends-at-thetable scene—the candles; the tree; the chocolate log—are all contained inside the house. Outside, the scene is different. Heavy snow in the form of icing sugar has gathered on the ground and the trees. The lake with its ducks is frozen now; the sugar mice with their hymn sheets have gone, and long, murderous icicles—sugar-spun, but glassy-sharp—now hang from the branches of the trees.
Thierry is standing right under them, and a dark chocolate snowman, big as a bear, is watching him menacingly from the forest close by.
I look more closely at the little peg-doll. Uncannily, it looks like Thierry; his clothes, his hair, his mobile phone, even his expression somehow, depicted by an ambivalent line and a couple of dots for eyes.
And there is something else too. A spiral symbol in the sugar snow, drawn with the tip of a small finger. I’ve seen it before, in Anouk’s room, chalked up on her notice board; drawn in crayon on a pad; reproduced a hundred times with buttons and jigsaw pieces on this floor, now lustrous with that undeniable glamour—
And now I begin to understand. Those signs scratched under the countertop. The medicine bags hanging over the door. The new influx of customers; the friends we have made; all the changes that have occurred here over the past few weeks. This is far more than a child’s game. This is more like a secret campaign over a territory I was not even aware was in dispute.
And the general behind this campaign?
Do I even need to ask?
Friday, 21 December
Winter Solstice
It’s always mad on the last day of term. lessons are mostly games and tidying up; there are form parties, cakes, and Christmas cards; teachers who haven’t smiled all year go around wearing novelty Christmas bauble earrings and Santa hats and so
metimes even giving out sweets.
Chantal and Co. have been keeping their distance. Since they got back some time last week, they haven’t been half as popular as they used to be. Maybe it’s a ringworm thing. Suze’s hair is coming back, though she still wears her beanie all the time. Chantal looks OK, I guess, but Danielle, who was the first to call Rosette those names, has lost most of her hair and her eyebrows as well. They can’t possibly know that I did that—but all the same, they keep out of my way, like sheep around an electric fence. No more It games. No more pranks. No more jokes about my hair, or visits to the chocolaterie. Mathilde heard Chantal tell Suze I was “creepy.” Jean-Loup and I just laughed like crazy. “Creepy.” I mean, how lame can you get?
But now there’s only three days to go, and there’s still no sign at all of Roux. I’ve been looking out for him all week, but he hasn’t been seen by anyone. I even went round to the hostel today, but there was no sign of anyone there at all, and Rue de Clichy isn’t somewhere you’d want to hang around—especially not now when it’s getting dark, with sick splattered on the pavements and sleeping drunks bundled into the steel-shuttered doorways.
But I thought he’d be here last night, at least—for Rosette’s birthday, if nothing else—and of course he wasn’t. I miss him so much. But I can’t help thinking there’s something wrong. Did he lie about having a boat? Did he forge that check? Has he gone for good? Thierry says he’d better be gone, if he knows what’s good for him. Zozie says he might still be around, hiding out somewhere nearby. Maman doesn’t say anything.
I’ve told Jean-Loup about it all. Roux, Rosette, and the whole mess. I told him Roux was my best friend, and now I’m afraid he’s gone for good, and he kissed me and said he was my friend—
It was just a kiss. Not anything gross. But now I feel all shivery and tingly, like there’s a triangle playing inside my stomach or something, and I think perhaps—
Oh, boy.
He says I should talk to Maman, and try to sort things out with her, but she’s always so busy nowadays, and sometimes at dinner she’s so quiet and she looks at me in a sad kind of disappointed way, as if there’s something I ought to have done, and I don’t know what to say to make things better—
Maybe that’s why I slipped tonight. I’d been thinking of Roux and the party again, and whether I can trust him to come after all. Because missing Rosette’s birthday’s bad enough, but if he’s not there on Christmas Eve, then it won’t work out the way we planned, like he’s some special secret ingredient to a recipe that can’t be finished otherwise. And if it doesn’t happen right, then things will never go back to the way they were before, and they need to, they need to, especially now. . . .
Zozie had to go out tonight, and Maman was working late again. She’s getting so many orders now that she can hardly handle all of them; and so for dinner I made a pot of spaghetti, then took mine up to my room so Ma-man could have space to work.
It was ten o’clock when I went to bed, but even then I couldn’t sleep, so I went down to the kitchen for a drink of milk. Zozie still wasn’t back and Maman was making chocolate truffles. Everything smelled of chocolate: Maman’s dress; her hair; even Rosette, who was playing on the kitchen floor with a pat of dough and some pastry cutters.
It all looked so safe, so familiar. I ought to have known it was a mistake.
Maman looked tired and kind of stressed; she was pounding away at the truffle paste like it was bread dough or something, and when I came down for my glass of milk she hardly looked at me at all.
“Hurry up, Anouk,” she said. “I don’t want you staying up too late.”
Well, Rosette’s only four, I thought, and she’s allowed to stay up late—
“It’s the holidays,” I said.
“I don’t want you falling ill,” said Maman.
Rosette pulled on my pajama leg, wanting to show me her pastry shapes.
“That’s nice, Rosette. Shall we cook them now? ”
Rosette grinned and signed: yum, yum.
Thank goodness for Rosette, I thought. Always happy; always smiling. Not like everyone else round here. When I grow up, I’ll live with Rosette; we could stay on a boat on the river, like Roux, and eat sausages right out of the can, and light bonfires at the side of the river, and maybe Jean-Loup could live nearby—
I lit the oven and took out a baking tray. Rosette’s pastry shapes were a bit grubby, but that wouldn’t matter when they were cooked. “We’ll bake them twice, like biscuits,” I said. “Then we can hang them on the Christmas tree.”
Rosette laughed and hooted at the pastry shapes through the glass oven door, signing for them to cook fast. That made me laugh, and for a minute it felt OK, as if a cloud had gone from overhead. Then Maman spoke, and the cloud was back.
“I found something of yours,” she said, still pounding away at the truffle paste. I wondered what she’d found, and where. In my room, or my pockets, perhaps. Sometimes I think she spies on me. I can always tell when she’s been through my things: books left out of place; papers moved; toys put away. I don’t know what she’s looking for—but so far she hasn’t found my secret special hiding place. It’s a shoe box, hidden at the bottom of my wardrobe, with my diary, and some pictures, and some other stuff that I don’t want anyone to see.
“This is yours, isn’t it? ” She reached into the kitchen drawer and pulled out Roux’s peg-doll, which I’d left in the pocket of my jeans. “Did you make this? ”
I nodded.
“Why? ”
For a while I didn’t say anything. What could I say? I don’t think I could have explained even if I’d wanted to. To have everything right back in its place; to bring Roux back, and not just Roux—
“You’ve seen him, haven’t you? ” she said.
I didn’t answer. She already knew.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Anouk? ” she said.
“Well, why didn’t you tell me he was Rosette’s dad? ”
Now Maman went very still. “Who told you that? ”
“No one,” I said.
“Was it Zozie ? ”
I shook my head.
“Then who? ”
“I just guessed.”
She put down the spoon on the side of the dish and sat down very slowly on the kitchen chair. She sat there in silence for such a long time that I could smell the pastry shapes beginning to burn. Rosette was still playing with the pastry cutters, stacking them up on top of one another. They are made of plastic, six of them, all in different colors: a purple cat, a yellow star, a red heart, a blue moon, an orange monkey, and a green diamond. I used to like playing with them when I was small, making chocolate biscuits and gingerbread shapes, and decorating them with yellow and white icing from a squeezy bag.
“Maman? ” I said. “Are you OK? ”
For a moment she didn’t say anything, just looked at me, eyes dark as forever. “Did you tell him? ” she said at last.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. She could see it in my colors just as I could see it in hers. I wanted to say that it was all right, that she didn’t have to lie to me, that I knew all kinds of things now, that I could help her—
“Well, now at least we know why he’s gone.”
“You think he’s gone ? ”
Maman just shrugged.
“He wouldn’t go because of that! ”
Now she gave a tired smile and held out the peg-doll, all gleaming with the sign of the Changing Wind.
“It’s just a doll, Maman,” I said.
“Nanou, I thought you trusted me.”
I could see her colors then, all sad grays and anxious yellows, like old newspapers kept up in an attic somewhere that somebody wanted to throw away. And now I could see what Maman was thinking—flashes of it, anyway—like flicking through a scrapbook of thoughts. A picture of me, six years old, sitting beside her at a chrome-topped counter, both of us grinning like mad, with a tall glass of creamy hot chocolate between us and two little spoons. A st
orybook, with pictures, left open on a chair. A drawing of mine, with two shaky people that might have been me and Maman, both with smiles as big as summer watermelons, standing under a lollipop tree. Me fishing from Roux’s boat. Me now, running with Pantoufle, running toward something I can never reach—
And something—a shadow—over us.
It frightened me to see her so afraid. And I wanted to trust her, to tell her that it was OK, and how nothing was ever really lost, because Zozie and I were bringing it back—
“Bringing what back? ”
“Don’t worry, Maman. I know what I’m doing. This time there won’t be an Accident.”
Her colors flared, but her face stayed calm. She smiled at me, speaking very slowly and patiently, as if she were talking to Rosette. “Listen, Nanou. This is very important. I need you to tell me everything.”
I hesitated. I’d promised Zozie—
“Trust me, Anouk. I need to know.”
So I tried to explain about Zozie’s System; and the colors, and the names, the Mexican symbols, and the Changing Wind, and our lessons up in Zozie’s room, and the way I’d helped Mathilde and Claude, and how we’d helped the chocolate shop to break even at last, and Roux, and the peg-dolls, and how Zozie had said there were no such things as Accidents, only regular people and people like us.
“You said it wasn’t real magic,” I said. “But Zozie says we should use what we’ve got. We shouldn’t just pretend we’re like everyone else. We shouldn’t have to hide anymore. . . .”
“Sometimes hiding’s the only way.”
“No, sometimes you can fight back.”
“Fight back? ” she said.
So then I told her what I’d done at school; and how Zozie had told me about riding the wind, and using the wind, and how we shouldn’t be afraid. And finally I told her about Rosette and me, and how we’d called the Changing Wind to bring Roux back, so we’d be a family—
She flinched at that, like she’d burned herself.