‘Friends of yours?’ said Zozie as we got off the bus.
‘As if,’ I said, and rolled my eyes.
Zozie laughed. She laughs a lot, quite loud, actually, and never seems to mind if people stare. She was very tall in those platform boots. I wished I had some.
‘Well, why don’t you get some?’ said Zozie.
I shrugged.
‘I have to say that’s a very – conventional look you’ve got.’ I love the way she says conventional, with a gleam in her eye that’s quite different from just making fun. ‘Now I had you down as more of an original, if you get my drift.’
‘Maman doesn’t like us to be different.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Really?’
Again, I shrugged.
‘Oh, well. Each to his own. Listen, there’s a spectacular little place just down the road that does the most wonderful Saint-Honorés this side of paradise – so why don’t we just stop by there to celebrate?’
‘Celebrate what?’ I said.
‘I’m going to be a neighbour of yours!’
Well, of course I know I’m not supposed to go off with strangers. Maman tells me often enough, and you can’t live in Paris without picking up a few cautious habits. But this was different – this was Zozie – and besides, I was meeting her in a public place, an English tea-shop I hadn’t seen before which did, as she’d promised, the most fabulous cakes.
I wouldn’t have gone there on my own. Places like that make me nervous – all glass tables and ladies in furs drinking fancy teas in bone-china cups, and waitresses in little black dresses who looked at me in my school clothes with my hair all over the place, and looked at Zozie in her purple platform boots as if they couldn’t believe either of us.
‘I love this place,’ said Zozie in a low voice. ‘It’s hilarious. And it takes itself so seriously—’
It took its prices seriously, too. Way out of my league – ten euros just for a pot of tea, twelve for a cup of hot chocolate.
‘It’s all right. My treat,’ said Zozie, and we sat down at a corner table while a sulky-looking waitress who looked like Jeanne Moreau handed us the menu as if it gave her a pain.
‘You know Jeanne Moreau?’ said Zozie, surprised.
I nodded, still feeling nervous. ‘She was fabulous in Jules et Jim.’
‘Not with that poker up her arse,’ said Zozie, indicating our waitress, now all smiles around two expensive-looking ladies with identical blonde hair.
I gave a snort of laughter. The ladies looked at me, then down at Zozie’s purple boots. Their heads went together, and I suddenly thought of Suze and Chantal, and felt my mouth go dry.
Zozie must have noticed something, because she stopped laughing and looked concerned. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
‘I don’t know. I just thought those people were laughing at us.’ It’s the kind of place Chantal’s mother takes her to, I tried to explain. Where very thin ladies in pastel cashmere drink lemon tea and ignore the cakes.
Zozie crossed her long legs. ‘That’s because you’re not a clone. Clones fit in. Freaks stand out. Ask me which one I prefer.’
I shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘You’re not convinced.’ She gave me her mischievous grin. ‘Watch this.’ And she flicked her fingers at the waitress who looked like Jeanne Moreau, and just as she did, at exactly the same time, the waitress stumbled in her high heels and dropped a whole pot of lemon tea on to the table in front of her, soaking the tablecloth and dripping hot tea into the ladies’ handbags and on to their expensive shoes.
I looked at Zozie.
Zozie grinned back. ‘Neat trick, hey?’
And then I laughed, because of course it was an accident, and no one could have foreseen what was going to happen, but to me it looked exactly as if Zozie had made the teapot fall, with the waitress fussing over the mess, and the pastel ladies with their wet shoes, and no one watching us at all, or laughing at Zozie’s ridiculous boots.
So we ordered cakes from the menu then, and coffee from the special bar. Zozie had a Saint-Honoré – no dieting for her – and I had a frangipane and we both had vanilla latte, and we talked for longer than I thought, about Suze, and school, and books, and Maman, and Thierry, and the chocolaterie.
‘It must be great, living in a chocolate shop,’ said Zozie, starting her Saint-Honoré.
‘It’s not as nice as Lansquenet.’
Zozie looked interested. ‘What’s Lansquenet?’
‘A place we used to live before. Down south somewhere. It was cool.’
‘Cooler than Paris?’ She looked surprised.
So I told her about Lansquenet, and Les Marauds where we used to play, Jeannot and I, by the banks of the river; and then I told her about Armande, and the river people, and Roux’s boat with its glass roof and the little galley with its chipped enamel pans, and the way we used to make the chocolates, Maman and I, late at night and early in the morning, so that everything used to smell of chocolate, even the dust.
Afterwards I was surprised at how much I’d talked. I’m not supposed to talk about that; or any of the places we were before. But with Zozie it’s different. With her, it feels safe.
‘So with Madame Poussin gone, who’s going to help your mother now?’ said Zozie, scooping froth from her glass with a little spoon.
‘We’ll manage,’ I said.
‘Does Rosette go to school?’
‘Not yet.’ For some reason I didn’t want to tell her about Rosette. ‘She’s very bright, though. She can draw really well. She signs, and she even follows the words in her story books with her finger.’
‘She doesn’t look much like you.’
I shrugged.
Zozie looked at me with that gleam in her eye, as if she was going to say something else, but didn’t. She finished her latte and said: ‘It must be tough, not having a father.’
I shrugged. Of course I have a father – we just don’t know who he is – but I wasn’t going to say that to Zozie.
‘Your mother and you must be very close.’
‘Nn-hm.’ I nodded.
‘You look alike—’ She stopped and smile-frowned a little, as if trying to figure out something that puzzled her. ‘And there’s something about you, isn’t there, Annie, something I can’t quite put my finger on—’
I didn’t say anything to that, of course. Silence is safer, Maman says, so that what you say can’t be used against you.
‘Well, you’re not a clone, that’s for sure. I bet you know a few tricks—’
‘Tricks?’ I thought of the waitress and the spilled lemon tea. I looked away, feeling suddenly awkward again, wishing someone would come with the bill so that I could say goodbye and run back home.
But our waitress was avoiding us, chatting with the man behind the coffee bar, laughing now and flicking her hair, the way Suze does sometimes when Jean-Loup Rimbault (that’s a boy she likes) is standing nearby. Besides, I’ve noticed that about waiters and waitresses: even when they serve you on time, they never want to bring you the bill.
But then Zozie made a little forked sign with her fingers, so very small I might have missed it. A little forked sign, like flicking a switch, and the waitress who looked like Jeanne Moreau turned round as if someone had prodded her and brought us the bill at once on a tray.
Zozie smiled and took out her purse. Jeanne Moreau waited, looking bored and sulky, and I half-expected Zozie to say something – after all, someone who can say ‘arse’ in an English tea-shop surely isn’t shy about speaking their mind.
But she didn’t. ‘Here’s fifty. You can keep the change.’ And she handed the waitress a five-euro note.
Well, even I could see it was a five. I saw it quite clearly, as Zozie put it on the tray and smiled. But somehow the waitress didn’t see.
Instead she said: ‘Merci, bonne journée,’ and Zozie made that sign with her hand, and put away her purse as if nothing had happened—
And then she turned and winked at me.
For a second I wasn’t sure I’d seen it right. It might just have been a normal kind of accident – after all, the place was crowded, the waitress was busy, and people sometimes make mistakes.
But after what had happened with the tea—
She smiled at me, just like a cat that could scratch you even as it sits purring on your knee.
Tricks, she’d said.
Accident, I thought.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t come; wished I hadn’t called to her that day in front of the chocolaterie. It’s only a game – it’s not even real – and yet it feels so dangerous, like a sleeping thing that you can only poke so many times before it opens its eyes for good.
I looked at my watch. ‘I have to go.’
‘Annie. Relax. It’s half past four—’
‘Maman worries if I’m late.’
‘Five minutes won’t hurt—’
‘I have to go.’
I think I expected her to stop me, somehow; to make me turn back, as the waitress had. But Zozie just smiled, and I felt stupid at having panicked like that. Some people are just suggestible. The waitress was probably one of them. Or maybe they both made a mistake – or maybe I did.
But I knew I hadn’t. And she knew I’d seen. It was in her colours. And in the way she looked at me – half-smiling, as if we’d shared something more than just cake—
I know it’s not safe. But I like her. I really do. I wanted to say something to make her understand—
On impulse I turned, and found her still smiling.
‘Hey, Zozie,’ I said. ‘Is that your real name?’
‘Hey, Annie,’ she mocked. ‘Is that yours?’
‘Well, I—’ I was so stunned that for a second I nearly told her. ‘My real friends call me Nanou.’
‘And do you have many?’ she said, smiling.
I laughed and held up a single finger.
2
Tuesday, 6th November
WHAT AN INTERESTING child. Younger than her contemporaries in some ways, but so much older in others, she has no difficulty in speaking with adults, but with other children she seems awkward, as if trying to assess their level of competence. With me she was expansive, funny, talkative, wistful, wilful but with an instinctive caution as soon as I touched – ever so lightly – on the subject of her strangeness.
Of course, no child wants to be seen as different. But Annie’s reserve goes further than this. It’s as if she’s hiding something from the world, some alien quality that might be dangerous if it were discovered.
Other people may not see it. But I’m not other people, and I find myself drawn to her in a way I find impossible to resist. I wonder if she knows what she is, if she understands – if she has any inkling of the potential in that sullen little head.
I met her again today, on her way home from school. She was – not cool, precisely, but certainly less confiding than yesterday, as if aware of a mark overstepped. As I said, an interesting child, and all the more so for the challenge she presents. I sense that she is not impervious to seduction; but she is careful, very careful, and I will have to work slowly if I am not to frighten her away.
And so we simply talked for a while – I made no mention of her otherness, or the place she calls Lansquenet, or the chocolate shop – and then we went our separate ways, but not before I had told her where I lived, and where I’m working nowadays.
Working? Everyone needs a job. It gives me an excuse to play, to be with people, to observe them and to learn their little secrets. I’m not in need of the money, of course; which is why I can afford to take the first convenient job on offer. The one job any girl can find without difficulty in a place like Montmartre.
No, not that. Waitressing, of course.
It’s been a long, long time since I worked in a café. These days I don’t have to – the pay’s lousy and the hours are worse – but I feel that being a waitress somehow suits Zozie de l’Alba, and besides, it gives me a good vantage point from which to observe comings and goings in the neighbourhood.
Le P’tit Pinson, tucked into the corner of the Rue des Faux-Monnayeurs, is an old-style café from the dingy days of Montmartre, dark and smoky and panelled in layers of grease and nicotine. Its owner is Laurent Pinson, a sixty-five-year-old native Parisian with an aggressive moustache and poor personal hygiene. Like Laurent himself, the café’s appeal is generally limited to the older generation – who appreciate its modest pricing and its plat du jour – and the whimsical like myself, who enjoy its owner’s spectacular rudeness and the extreme politics of its elderly patrons.
Tourists choose the Place du Tertre, with its pretty little cafés and gingham-topped tables along the cobbled lanes. Or the art déco pâtisserie on the lower Butte, with its jewelled array of tarts and confits. Or the English tea-shop on Rue Ramey. But I’m not interested in tourists. I’m interested in that chocolaterie, which I can see quite clearly from across the square. From here I can see who comes and goes, I can count the customers, monitor deliveries and generally acquaint myself with the rhythms of its little life.
The letters I stole on that first day have proved less than useful in practical terms. A stamped invoice dated 20th October, marked PAID IN CASH, from Sogar Fils, a confectionery supplier. But who pays in cash nowadays? An impractical, senseless means of payment – doesn’t this woman have an account? – which leaves me as ignorant as I was before.
The second envelope was a sympathy card for Madame Poussin, signed Thierry, with a kiss. Postmarked London, with a see you soon, and please don’t worry casually appended.
File that away for later use.
The third, on a faded postcard of the Rhône, was even less informative.
Heading north. I’ll drop by if I can.
Signed R, the card was addressed only to Y and A, though the writing was so careless that the Y looked more like a V.
The fourth, junk mail peddling financial services.
Still, I tell myself. There’s time.
‘Hey! It’s you!’ The artist again. I know him now; his name is Jean-Louis, and his friend with the beret is Paupaul. I see them often at Le P’tit Pinson, drinking beer and chatting up the ladies. Fifty euros pays for a pencil sketch – call it ten for the sketch, and forty for the flattery – and they have their spiel down to a fine art. Jean-Louis is a charmer – plain women are particularly susceptible – and it is his persistence, rather than his talent, that holds the secret of his success.
‘I won’t buy it, so don’t waste your time,’ I told him as he opened his pad.
‘Then I’ll sell it to Laurent,’ he said, with a wink. ‘Or maybe I’ll just keep it myself.’
Paupaul pretends indifference. He’s older than his friend, and his style is less exuberant. In fact he rarely speaks at all, but stands at his easel in the corner of the square, scowling furiously at the paper and occasionally scratching at it with frightening intensity. He has an intimidating moustache, and makes his patrons sit at length, while he scowls and scratches and mutters violently to himself before producing a work of such bizarre proportions that his customers are awed into paying up.
Jean-Louis was still sketching me as I made my way between the tables. ‘I’m warning you. I charge,’ I said.
‘Consider the lilies,’ said Jean-Louis airily. ‘They do not toil, neither do they demand a sitter’s fee.’
‘Lilies don’t have bills to pay.’
This morning I called in at the bank. I’ve been doing it every day this week. To withdraw twenty-five thousand euros in cash would certainly bring me the wrong kind of attention, but several withdrawals of modest size – a thousand here, two hundred there – are barely remembered from one day to the next.
Still, it never pays to be complacent.
And so I went in, not as Zozie, but as the colleague in whose name I opened the account – Barbara Beauchamp, a secretary with a hitherto unblemished record of trust. I made myself drab for the occasion; although true invisibility is impossible
(besides being far too conspicuous), drabness is open to anyone, and a nondescript woman in a woolly hat and gloves can pass almost unseen anywhere.
Which is why I sensed it immediately. An odd sensation of scrutiny as I stood at the counter; an unprecedented alertness in their colours; a request to wait as they processed my cash; the scent and sound of something not quite right.
I did not wait for confirmation. I left the bank as soon as the cashier was out of sight, then slipped the cheque-book and card into an envelope and posted it in the nearest letter-box. The address was fictitious; the incriminating items will spend three months passing from one post office to the next until they end up in the dead-letter depot, never to be found. If I ever need to dispose of a body, I’ll do the same; sending parcelled hands and feet and bits of torso to blurry addresses across Europe and back, while police search in vain for the shallow grave.
Not that murder was ever my taste. Still, you should never completely dismiss any possibility. I found a convenient clothes store in which to change back from Madame Beauchamp to Zozie de l’Alba, and, with an eye for anything out of the ordinary, returned by a roundabout route to my bed-and-breakfast in lower Montmartre and contemplated the future.
Damn.
Twenty-two thousand euros remained in Madame Beauchamp’s fake account – money that had cost me six months’ planning, research, performance and honing of my new identity. No chance of retrieving it now; although it was unlikely that I would be recognized from the bank’s blurry camera footage, it was more than likely that the account had been frozen, pending police investigation. Face it, the money was lost for ever, leaving me with little more than an extra charm on my bracelet – a mouse, as it happens, quite appropriate for poor Françoise.
The sad truth is, I tell myself, there’s no future in craftsmanship any more. Six wasted months, and I’m back where I started. No money, no life.
Well, that can change. All I need is a little inspiration. We’ll start with the chocolate shop, shall we? With Vianne Rocher, from Lansquenet, who for reasons unknown has recast herself as Yanne Charbonneau, mother of two, respectable widow of the Butte.
The Lollipop Shoes Page 5