Do I even need to ask?
4
Friday, 21st 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 sometimes 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 drains. ‘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 cheque? 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 Maman 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 smelt 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 pyjama-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 each other. They are made of plastic, six of them, all in different colours: 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-sugar 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 colours 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 colours then, all sad greys and anxious yellows, like ol
d 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 story book, 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 towards 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 colours flared, but her face stayed calm. She smiled at me, speaking very slowly and patiently, as if she was 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 colours, 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 any more . . .’
‘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 burnt herself.
‘And Thierry?’ she said.
Well, he had to go. Surely Maman could see that. ‘Nothing bad happened, did it?’ I said. Except that—
Maybe it did, I thought. Maybe if Roux really did forge that cheque, then maybe that was the Accident. Maybe it’s what Maman says: that nothing comes without a price, and even magic has to have an equal and opposite reaction, like Monsieur Gestin tells us in physics at school—
Maman turned to the kitchen stove. ‘I’m making hot chocolate. Do you want some?’
I shook my head.
She made the chocolate anyway, grating it into the hot milk, adding nutmeg and vanilla and a cardamom pod. It was getting late – eleven o’clock – and Rosette was nearly asleep on the floor.
And for a moment I thought it was all right, and I was happy I’d cleared the air, because I hate having to hide from Maman, and I was thinking that perhaps now she knew the truth she wouldn’t be afraid any more, and she could be Vianne Rocher again, and fix it so we’d be all right—
She turned, and I knew I’d made a mistake.
‘Nanou, please. Take Rosette to bed. We’ll deal with this tomorrow.’
I looked at her. ‘You’re not angry?’ I said.
She shook her head, but I could see she was. Her face was white and very still, and I could see her colours, all mixed up in reds and angry oranges and panicky zigzags of grey and black.
‘It isn’t Zozie’s fault,’ I said.
Her face told me she didn’t agree.
‘You won’t tell her, will you?’
‘Just go to bed, Nou.’
So I did, and lay awake for a long time, listening to the wind and rain in the eaves and watching the clouds and the stars and the white Christmas lights, all jumbled up against the wet windowpane so that after a while there was no way to tell which were the real stars and which were the fake.
5
Friday, 21st December
IT’S BEEN A long time since I did any scrying. An accidental glimpse; a spark, like static from a stranger’s hand – but nothing more deliberate. I can see their favourites, that’s all. Whatever their secrets, I don’t want to know.
Tonight, however, I must try again. Anouk’s account, though incomplete, is enough to make me see that, at least. I managed to keep calm until she left; to maintain the illusion of control. But now I can hear the December wind, and the Kindly Ones are at the door . . .
My Tarot deck is no help to me. It just keeps showing me the same thing, the same cards in a different order, however much I shuffle them.
The Fool; the Lovers; the Magus, Change.
Death; the Hanged Man; the Tower.
So this time, I’m using chocolate; a technique I haven’t tried in years. But I need to keep my hands busy tonight, and making truffles is such a simple thing that I could do it blind, by touch, with only the scent and the sound of the melted couverture with which to gauge the temperature.
It is a kind of magic, you know. My mother despised it – called it trivial, a waste of time – but it’s my kind of magic, and my tools have always worked better for me than hers. Of course, all magic has consequences; but I think we’ve gone too far to worry about that. I was wrong to try to lie to Anouk – more so to try to lie to myself.
I work very slowly, eyes half-closed. I smell the hot copper in front of me; the water boils with a scent of age and metal. These pans have been with me many years; I know their contours, the dents that time has put upon them, and in some places they bear the bright-burnished marks of my hands against the darker patina.
Everything around me seems to have taken on a sharper kind of definition. My mind is free; the wind is up; outside the solstice moon is only a few days’ waxing to full, and it rides the clouds like a buoy in a storm.
The water simmers, but must not boil. Now into the small ceramic pan I grate the block of couverture. Almost at once the scent rises; the dark and loamy scent of bitter chocolate from the block. At this concentration it is slow to melt; the chocolate is very low in fat, and I will have to add butter and cream to the mixture to bring it to truffle consistency. But now it smells of history; of the mountains and forests of South America; of felled wood and spilt sap and campfire smoke. It smells of incense and patchouli; of the black gold of the Maya and the red gold of the Aztec; of stone and dust and of a young girl with flowers in her hair and a cup of pulque in her hand.
It is intoxicating; as it melts the chocolate becomes glossy; steam rises from the copper pan and the scent grows richer, blossoming into cinnamon and allspice and nutmeg; dark undertones of anise and espresso; brighter notes of vanilla and ginger. Now it is almost melted through. A gentle vapour rises from the pan. Now we have the true Theobroma, the elixir of the gods in volatile form, and in the steam I can almost see—
A young girl dancing with the moon. A rabbit follows at her heels. Behind her stands a woman with her head in shadow, so that for a moment she seems to look three ways—
But now the steam is getting too thick. The chocolate must be no warmer than forty-six degrees. Too hot, and the chocolate will scorch and streak. Too cool, and it will bloom white and dull. I know by the scent and the level of steam that we are close to the danger point. Take the copper off the heat and stand the ceramic in cold water until the temperature has dropped.
Cooling, it acquires a floral scent; of violet and lavender papier poudré. It smells of my grandmother, if I’d had one, and of wedding dresses kept carefully boxed in the attic, and of bouquets under glass. I can almost see the glass now, a round cloche under which a doll stands, a blue-eyed doll in a fur-trimmed red coat that reminds me strangely of someone I
know . . .
A woman with a tired face looks longingly at the blue-eyed doll. I think I’ve seen her before, somewhere. And behind her, another woman stands, with her head half-hidden behind the curved glass. I seem to know this woman, somehow, but her face is distorted through the cloche and she could be almost anyone—
Return the pan to the simmering water. Now it must reach thirty-one degrees. It is my last chance to make sense of this, and I can feel a tremor in my hands as I look down into the melted couverture. Now it smells of my children: of Rosette with her birthday cake and Anouk, sitting in the shop, six years old, talking and laughing and planning – what?
A festival. A Grand Festival du Chocolat – with Easter eggs and chocolate hens and the Pope in white chocolate—
It is a wonderful memory. That year, we faced down the Black Man and won – we rode the wind, at least, for a while—
But this is no time for nostalgia. Banish the steam from the dark surface. Try again.
And now we are in Le Rocher de Montmartre. A table is set, all our friends are here. Another kind of festival now – I see Roux at the table, smiling, laughing, with a holly crown on his red hair, holding Rosette in his arms and drinking a glass of champagne—
But that’s just wishful thinking, of course. We often see what we want to see. For a moment I am shaken almost to tears—
Once more I pass my hand through the steam.
And now the festival is different again. There are firecrackers and marching bands and people dressed as skeletons – the Day of the Dead, with children dancing in the streets and paper lanterns with demon faces painted on them, and sugar skulls on sticks and Santa Muerte parading through the streets with her three faces watching every which way—
But what can it have to do with me? We never got as far as South America, although my mother longed to see the place. We never even got to Florida—
I reach out a hand to disperse the steam. And it’s then that I see her. A mouse-haired girl of eight or nine, hand-in-hand with her mother among the crowds. I sense they are different from the rest – something about their skin, their hair – and they look around in half-lost wonderment at everything: the dancers; the demons; the painted piñatas on long pointed sticks with firecrackers tied to their tails . . .
The Lollipop Shoes Page 34