And win. And win. Which is all that matters. I like to win. I’m a very good player.
The question is, where to begin? Certainly, Annie could do with a little help – something to boost her confidence, to start her on the right path.
The names and symbols of One Jaguar and Rabbit Moon, written in marker on the bottom of her schoolbag, ought to take care of her social skills; but I think she needs a little more. And so I give her the Hurakan, or Hurricane, the Vengeful One, to make up for all those times of being It.
Not that Annie would think so, of course. There’s a regrettable lack of malice in the child, and all she really wants is for everyone to be friends. I’m sure I can cure her of that, however. Revenge is an addictive drug, which, once tasted, is seldom forgotten. After all, I should know.
Now I’m not in the business of granting wishes. In my game, it’s every witch for herself. But Annie is a genuine rarity – a plant, which, if nurtured, may produce spectacular blossom. In any case, there’s precious little opportunity to be creative in my line of work. Most of my cases are easy to crack; there’s no need for craftsmanship when a cantrip will do just as well.
Besides, for once, I can sympathize. I remember what it was like to be It every day. I remember the joy of settling scores.
This is going to be a pleasure.
4
Saturday, 17th November
THE FAT YOUNG man who never shuts up is called Nico. He told me so this afternoon, coming in to investigate. Yanne had just finished a batch of coconut truffles, and the whole place smelt of them; that mulled, earthy scent that catches at the throat. I think I said I don’t like chocolate – and yet that scent, so like the incense in my mother’s shop, sweet and rich and troubling, acts upon me like a drug, making me reckless, impulsive – making me want to interfere.
‘Hey, lady! Like your shoes. Great shoes. Fabulous shoes.’ That’s Fat Nico; a man in his twenties, I’d say at a guess, but weighing a good three hundred pounds, with curly hair to his shoulders and a puffy, screwed-up face like that of a giant baby, perpetually on the brink of laughter or tears.
‘Why, thank you,’ I said. Actually they’re among my favourites: high-heeled pumps from the 1950s in faded green velvet, with ribbons and crystal buckles on the toes . . .
You can often tell a person by their shoes. His were two-tone, black and white; good shoes but downtrodden like slippers at the heel, as if he couldn’t be bothered to put them on properly. Still lives at home, so I would guess – a mummy’s boy if ever I saw one – rebelling quietly through his shoes.
‘What’s that smell?’ He’d caught it at last; his big face turning towards the source. In the kitchen behind me, Yanne was singing. A rhythmic sound, as of a wooden spoon against a pot, suggested that Rosette was joining in. ‘Smells like someone’s doing some cooking. Point me to it, Shoe Lady! What’s for lunch?’
‘Coconut truffles,’ I said with a smile.
In less than a minute he’d bought the lot.
Oh, I don’t flatter myself on this occasion that it was any of my doing. His type is absurdly easy to seduce. A child could have done it; and he paid by Carte Bleue, which made it the work of an instant to collect his number (after all, I must keep in practice), although I do not mean to use it as yet. Such a clear trail might lead to the chocolaterie; and I’m enjoying myself far too much to jeopardize my position at this stage. Later, perhaps. When I know why I’m here.
Nico is not the only one to have noticed a difference in the air. Just this morning I sold an astonishing eight boxes of Yanne’s special truffles – some to regulars, some to strangers lured in from the streets by that earthy, seductive scent.
In the afternoon, it was Thierry le Tresset. Cashmere coat, dark suit, pink silk tie and hand-made brogues. Mmmm. I love a hand-made shoe; glossy as the flank of a well-groomed horse and whispering money from every perfect stitch. Perhaps I was wrong to overlook Thierry; he may be nothing special from an intellectual point of view, but a man with money is always worth a second glance.
He found Yanne in the kitchen, with Rosette, both of them laughing fit to split. Seemed slightly put out that she had to work – he came back from London today just to see her – though he agreed to call back after five.
‘Well, why on earth didn’t you check your phone?’ I heard him say from the kitchen door.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Yanne (half laughing, I thought). ‘I don’t really know about things like that. I suppose I must have forgotten to turn it on. Besides, Thierry—’
‘God help us,’ he said. ‘I’m marrying a cave woman.’
She laughed. ‘Call me a technophobe.’
‘How can I call you anything if you won’t answer the phone?’
He left Yanne with Rosette then, and came round to the front for a word with me. He mistrusts me, I know. I’m not his type. He may even consider me a bad influence. And, like most men, he sees only the obvious: the pink hair; the eccentric shoes; the vaguely bohemian look that I have worked so hard to cultivate.
‘You’re helping Yanne. That’s nice,’ he said. He smiled – he’s really very charming, you know – but I could sense the wariness in his colours. ‘What about the P’tit Pinson?’
‘Oh, I still work there in the evenings,’ I said. ‘Laurent doesn’t need me all day – and really, he isn’t the easiest of bosses.’
‘And Yanne is?’
I smiled at him. ‘Let’s say Yanne doesn’t have such – roving hands.’
He looked startled, as well he might. ‘I’m sorry. I thought—’
‘I know what you thought. I know I don’t quite look the part. But really, I’m just trying to help Yanne. She deserves a break – now don’t you agree?’
He nodded.
‘Come on, Thierry. I know what you need. A café-crème and a milk chocolate square.’
He grinned. ‘You know my favourite.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the knack.’
After that, it was Laurent Pinson – for the first time in three years, so Yanne says – all stiff and churchy and trying too hard in his cheap and shiny brown shoes. He hummed and hawed for a laughable time, occasionally casting a jealous glance at me over the glass counter-top, then opted for the cheapest chocolates he could find and asked me to wrap them as a gift.
I took my time with scissors and string, smoothing down the pale-blue tissue paper with the tips of my fingers, wrapping it all in a double bow of silver ribbon and paper rose.
‘Someone’s birthday?’ I said.
Laurent gave his habitual grunt – mweh! – and fingered out the correct change. He has not yet spoken to me of my defection, though I know he resents it, thanking me with exaggerated politeness as I hand him the box.
I have no doubt as to the meaning of Laurent’s sudden interest in gift-wrapped chocolates. He means it as a gesture of defiance, indicating that there is more to Laurent Pinson than meets the eye and warning me that if I am fool enough to ignore his attentions, then someone else will benefit in my place.
Let them benefit. I sent him away with a cheery smile and the spiral sign of the Hurakan scratched on to the lid of his chocolate box with the pointed tip of a fingernail. It’s not that I bear any especial malice towards Laurent – although I’ll admit I wouldn’t grieve if the café were struck by lightning, or some client got food poisoning and sued the management. It’s just that I have no time to deal with him sensitively at this time, and besides, the last thing I want is a love-struck sexagenarian following me around, getting in the way of business.
I turned as he left and saw Yanne watching.
‘Laurent Pinson, buying chocolates?’
I grinned. ‘I told you he was sweet on me.’
She laughed at that, then looked abashed. Rosette peeped out from behind her knee, a wooden spoon in one hand, a melted something in the other. She made a sign with her chocolatey fingers.
Yanne handed her a macaroon.
I said, ‘The home-mad
e chocolates have all sold out.’
‘I know.’ She grinned. ‘Now I suppose I’ll have to make some more.’
‘I’ll help, if you like. Give you a break.’
She paused at that. Seemed to consider it, as if it were something much more than simple chocolate-making.
‘I promise you, I’m a fast learner.’
Of course I am. I’ve had to be. When you have had a mother like mine, you either learn fast or you don’t survive. An inner-city London school, fresh from the ravages of the comprehensive system and packed with thugs, immigrants and the damned. That was my training ground – and I learnt fast.
My mother had tried to teach me at home. By the time I was ten, I could read, write and do the double lotus. But then the Social Services got involved; pointed out Mother’s lack of qualifications, and I was packed off to St Michael’s-on-the-Green, a pit of roughly two thousand souls, which swallowed me up in less than no time.
My System was still in its infancy then. I had no defences; I wore green velvet dungarees with appliquéd dolphins on the pockets, and a turquoise headband to align my chakras. My mother picked me up at the school gates; on the first day, a small crowd gathered to watch. On the second, someone threw a stone.
Hard to imagine that kind of thing now. It happens, though – and for far less. It happened here, at Annie’s school – and for nothing more than a headscarf or two. Wild birds will kill exotic ones: the budgies and the love-birds and the yellow canaries – escaped from their cages, hoping to get a taste of the sky – usually end up back on the ground, plucked raw by their more conformist cousins.
It was inevitable. For the first six months I cried myself to sleep. I begged to be sent to some other school. I ran away; I was brought back; I prayed fervently to Jesus, Osiris and Quetzalcoatl to save me from the demons of St Michael’s-on-the-Green.
Unsurprisingly, nothing worked. I tried to adapt: changed my dungarees for jeans and a T-shirt, took up smoking, hung out with the crowd, but it was already too late. The bar had been set. Every school needs its freak; and for the next five years or so, I was it.
It was then that I could have used someone like Zozie de l’Alba. What use was my mother, that second-rate, patchouli-scented wannabe witch, with all her crystals and dreamcatchers and glib talk of karma? I didn’t care about karmic retribution. I wanted my retribution to be real: for my tormentors to be laid low, not later, not in some future lifetime, but paid back in full, in blood and in the present.
And so I studied, and studied hard. I made up my own curriculum from the books and pamphlets in Mother’s shop. The result was my System, every piece honed and refined and stored and practised with only one objective in mind.
Revenge.
I don’t suppose you’ll remember the case. It made the news at the time, of course; but there are so many similar stories now. Tales of perennial losers armed with handguns and crossbows, blowing themselves into high school legend in a single bloody, glorious, suicidal spree.
That wasn’t me at all, of course. Butch and Sundance were no heroes of mine. I was a survivor: a scarred veteran of five long years of bullying, name-calling, punching, thumping, taunting, pinching, vandalism and petty theft, the subject of much spiteful locker-room graffiti and a perpetual target for everyone.
In short, I was It.
But I bided my time. I studied and learnt. My curriculum was unorthodox, some might say profane, but I was always top of the class. My mother knew little about my research. If she had, she would have been appalled. Interventionist magic, as she liked to call it, was the very antithesis of her belief, and she held a number of quaint theories, promising cosmic retribution on those who dared to act for themselves.
Ah, well. I dared. And when at last I was ready, I went through St Michael’s-on-the-Green like a December wind. My mother never guessed the half of it – which was probably a good thing, as I’m sure she would have disapproved. But I’d made it. I was just sixteen, and I had passed the only exam that mattered.
Annie, of course, has a way to go. But with time, I hope to make something rather special of her.
And so, Annie. About that revenge.
5
Monday, 19th November
TODAY SUZE CAME to school with her head in a scarf. Apparently the hairdresser, instead of giving her highlights, has made her hair fall out in clumps. Some reaction to the peroxide, the hairdresser says – Suze told her she’d had it before, but she lied, and now the hairdresser says it isn’t her fault, that Suzanne’s hair was already damaged by all the ironing and straightening she’s done to it, and that if Suzanne had told her the truth in the first place, she would have used another solution and none of this would have happened.
Suzanne says her mother’s going to sue the company for distress and emotional trauma.
I think it’s hilarious.
I know I shouldn’t – Suzanne’s a friend. Although perhaps she isn’t – not quite. A friend stands up for you when you’re in trouble, and never goes along when someone’s being mean. Friends put out, is what Zozie says. With real friends, you’re never It.
I’ve been talking to Zozie a lot lately. She knows what it’s like to be my age, and to be different. Her mother had a shop, she says. Some people didn’t like it much, and once, someone even tried to set it on fire.
‘A bit like what happened to us,’ I said, and then I had to tell her the rest, about how we blew into the village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes at the beginning of Lent, and set up our chocolate shop right in front of the church, and about the curé who hated us, and all our friends, and the river people, and Roux, and Armande who died just the way she had lived, with no regrets and no goodbyes and with the taste of chocolate in her mouth.
I don’t suppose I should have told her all that. But it’s quite hard not to, with Zozie. And anyway, she works for us. She’s on our side. She understands.
‘I hated school,’ she told me yesterday. ‘I hated the kids and the teachers too. All those people who thought I was a freak, and who wouldn’t sit with me because of the herbs and stuff Mum used to put into my pockets. Asafoetida – God, that’s rank – and patchouli because it’s supposed to be spiritual, and dragon’s blood, that gets everywhere and leaves these red stains— And so the other kids used to laugh at me, and say I’d got nits, and say I smelt. And even the teachers got drawn in, and one woman – Mrs Fuller, she was called – gave me a talk about personal hygiene . . .’
‘That’s rotten!’
She grinned. ‘I paid them back.’
‘How?’
‘Another time, perhaps. The point is, Nanou, that for a long time I thought it was my fault. That I really was a freak, and I’d never amount to anything.’
‘But you’re so clever – and besides, you’re gorgeous.’
‘I didn’t feel clever or gorgeous then. I never felt good enough, or clean enough, or nice enough for them. I never bothered to do any work. I just assumed everyone was better than me. I talked to Mindy all the time—’
‘Your invisible friend—’
‘And of course, people laughed. Though by then it hardly mattered what I did. They’d have laughed at me anyway.’
She stopped talking, and I looked at her, trying to imagine her in those days. Trying to imagine her without her confidence, her beauty, her style . . .
‘The thing about beauty,’ Zozie said, ‘is that actually it doesn’t have much to do with looks at all. It’s not about the colour of your hair, or your size, or your shape. It’s all in here.’ She tapped her head. ‘It’s how you walk, and talk, and think – and whether you walk about like this—’
And then suddenly she did something that really startled me. She changed her face. Not like pulling a face, or anything; but her shoulders slumped, and she turned her eyes away, and her mouth drooped somehow, and she made her hair into a limp kind of curtain, and suddenly she was someone else, someone else in Zozie’s clothes, not ugly, not quite, but someone you wouldn’t turn r
ound to see twice, someone you’d forget as soon as they’d gone.
‘—or like this,’ she said, and she shook her hair and straightened up and just like that she was Zozie again, brilliant Zozie with her jingling bangles and her black-and-yellow peasant skirt and her pink-streaked hair and bright-yellow patent platform shoes that would have just looked weird on anyone else, but on Zozie they looked terrific, because she was Zozie, and everything does.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Could you teach me that?’
‘I just did,’ she said, laughing.
‘It looked like – magic,’ I said, and blushed.
‘Well, most magic really is that simple,’ said Zozie matter-of-factly, and if anyone else had said it I might have thought they were making fun of me, but not Zozie. Not her.
‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ I said.
‘Then call it something else.’ She shrugged. ‘Call it attitude, if you like. Call it charisma, or chutzpah, or glamour, or charm. Because basically it’s just about standing straight, looking people in the eye, shooting them a killer smile and saying, fuck off, I’m fabulous.’
I laughed at that, and not just because Zozie had said the f-word. ‘I wish I could do that,’ I said.
‘Try it,’ said Zozie. ‘You might be surprised.’
Of course I was lucky. Today was exceptional. Even Zozie couldn’t have known. But I did feel different, somehow; more alive, as if the wind had changed.
First there was Zozie’s whole attitude thing. I’d promised her I’d try it, and so I did, feeling just a bit self-conscious this morning with my hair just washed and a little of Zozie’s rose perfume on, as I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and practised my killer smile.
I have to say, it didn’t look bad. Not perfect, of course, but really, it makes a world of difference if you stand up straight and say the words (even if it’s only in your head).
The Lollipop Shoes Page 12