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For Rowan
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Also by Rupert Kingfisher
Imprint
Chapter One
In the city of Paris, in the middle of the River Seine, there is an island called the Isle Saint Louis. To Parisians, however, it is also known as the ‘Enchanted Isle’, owing to its strange air of quiet in the busy heart of the city. On the Enchanted Isle there are no monuments or buildings of note, but instead shaded avenues, narrow cobbled streets, and a number of specialist food shops, florists and boutiques. And it was here that, one day, a sweet shop appeared.
The sweet shop was brightly coloured, with grape-purple walls, a peppermint-blue door and an awning of strawberries and cream. The shop’s name was ‘Sweet Dreams’ and it was owned by a woman called Madame Bonbon. A plump, buxom lady with rosy cheeks and a warm smile, she looked like a favourite aunt or ideal nanny; the kind of person you might turn to if you ever needed comfort. And comfort was just what the girl needed whom she found crying in Notre-Dame.
Notre-Dame Cathedral was a short walk from the sweet shop, as it was on the adjacent island, the Isle of the City. It was a cold afternoon in late January the day Madame Bonbon found the girl. The cathedral was mostly empty, with only a few lone tourists wandering through the candlelit gloom. There was a smell of incense in the air and also the faint sound of quiet sobbing.
Madame Bonbon found her in a dark corner of the cathedral’s nave, sitting behind a pillar so that she was hidden from view; a girl slumped forward in an attitude of despair, her whole body shaking with tears.
‘Oh, my little poppet, whatever can be the matter?’
At the sound of the strange voice, the girl started.
‘Shh, it’s all right,’ whispered Madame Bonbon, sitting down beside her. She reached out to envelop the child in her arms. This provoked an unexpected flood of fresh tears, but Madame Bonbon rocked her gently until they passed.
When, eventually, the crying ceased, Madame Bonbon reached into her bag for a tissue.
‘Thank you,’ said the girl, taking it while moving fractionally away. She had become embarrassed at crying on the woman’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry to be such a nuisance. I should be going home.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Madame Bonbon. ‘You’re not a nuisance at all. Now then, dear, are you going to tell me your name?’
The girl looked up at her with red, tear-filled eyes.
‘My name’s Madeleine,’ she said.
Madeleine had stopped by the cathedral that day on her way back from school, seeking a quiet place where she would not be disturbed. She was in a state of great distress, but the source of her grief was something so shameful that she had not been able to share it with another soul.
‘Thank you for your kindness,’ said Madeleine, trying to break free from the embrace – the woman’s perfume was very strong and she was beginning to find it suffocating, ‘but I really ought to be going home now.’
The woman smiled, shaking her head. She did not move her arm from about Madeleine’s shoulders.
‘No, really,’ said Madeleine, becoming somewhat alarmed. ‘My parents will be wondering where I am.’
‘Of course you shall go home, little poppet,’ said Madame Bonbon, ‘but not without taking a special box of my sweets!’
Before Madeleine could object, Madame Bonbon took her by the hand and led her out of the cathedral into the fading winter light. The wind had picked up and they walked briskly to avoid the freezing gusts, crossing over the water on to the narrow streets of Saint Louis.
Madame Bonbon’s sweet shop was on the island’s main street, tucked in between a restaurant on one side and a florist’s on the other. It had a sign above the door with a picture of a crescent moon against a starry night sky. The moon had a face and was smiling. Sitting on his chin was a girl with fair hair, eating from a big box of sweets.
Madame Bonbon removed a note that read Back in five minutes and opened the front door.
The shop’s interior resembled a stage set from an old-fashioned theatre. It had high stone walls and wooden beams across the ceiling. The walls were hung with velvet drapes in shades of blue and purple, and were interspersed with mirrors, creating an illusion of depth. Lighting came from hanging lamps in the shapes of stars and crescent moons.
Next to the door there was a counter, with sweets stored behind it in tall crystal jars. Madeleine could see aniseed balls and acid drops, sherbet fruits and gobstoppers, caramels and sugared almonds, cherry lips and fruit jellies, jelly beans and fizz balls, multicoloured liquorice, a rainbow of lollipops, and bonbons in toffee, lemon and strawberry flavours.
The shop’s specialities were arranged about the room in their own individual displays. These were in the form of miniature stage sets, with dolls acting out scenes behind a pair of blue curtains. There was a display for chocolate sardines, which consisted of a seabed with a mermaid sitting on a rock, combing her green hair. Another, for coconut-flavour toadstools, showed a winter forest, with little fairies and ugly pixies hidden in among the trees.
The most striking display was for a kind of white chocolate truffle that came in the shape of a crescent moon. The truffles were packed in blue boxes, with a label showing the same image as on the shop’s sign. The little stage set consisted of a room that you peered into through the curtains. In the room there was a fireplace with flames made of orange paper, and a doll sitting next to it in a rocking chair. He wore eighteenth-century-style clothing, with a long, silver frock coat, stockings and knee breeches. His face was painted white and shaped like a crescent moon.
‘Would you like to try one?’ asked Madame Bonbon.
Madeleine glanced round. She had been so intrigued by the display that she hadn’t noticed Madame Bonbon standing right beside her.
‘Oh! No, thank you,’ said Madeleine. ‘I was just looking.’
‘But I insist,’ said Madame Bonbon. ‘They’re my speciality – you won’t have tasted anything quite like them before.’ She opened her hand to reveal one of the moon-shaped truffles. ‘Here,’ she said, handing it to Madeleine.
Madeleine thanked her and put the truffle in her mouth.
The outer shell was made of white chocolate and tasted richly of vanilla. The chocolate was quite solid and she had to bite firmly to reach the filling inside. This suddenly flooded into her mouth, some kind of velvety smooth liquid. It was sickly sweet and treacly, but with a bitter aftertaste. Altogether it was quite unpleasant and had Madeleine been alone she would have spat it out immediately – but just then she was surprised by a sudden onrush of joy.
Without understanding why, Madeleine felt radiantly happy. It was a bizarre feeling made all the more peculiar by knowing it could not be real. Only a moment earlier she had felt miserable and it was not that her troubles had disappeared, merely that she no longer cared. At least not for as long as she was eating the truffle. As she swallowed the last of it, so her old mood returned. Except now it was much worse. Earlier she had felt bad but there was a new edginess now, a sense of anxiety as if she were not quite herself. The fe
eling was dreadful and she knew the only way to dispel it would be to have another truffle straight away.
Madeleine looked up to find Madame Bonbon watching her. There was a strange intensity about her eyes.
‘Did you like it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Madeleine. ‘It was delicious.’
Madame Bonbon smiled. ‘Well,’ she said, handing her a midnight-blue box. ‘Why don’t you take some home. And then, when they’re finished, you can come back for more. Would you like that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Madeleine, nodding. ‘Yes, I’d like that very much!’
As she took the box, Madeleine noticed something peculiar about its label. The eyes of the grinning moon seemed much darker than before. With a slight shiver, she also noticed something about the girl sitting on his chin. It now struck her how uncannily like herself the girl looked, as if Madeleine had been the model for the picture.
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Chapter Two
Before stopping in the cathedral that day, Madeleine had been on her way somewhere else. She had been going to visit two old friends of hers who lived in the Rue d’Escargot: a woman called Madame Pamplemousse and a cat called Camembert. Together they ran a shop called ‘Edibles’, a delicatessen that sold all kinds of unusual foods. Some of them were very unusual indeed, as they were, in fact, the most extraordinary and delicious foods ever tasted.
‘Edibles’ was located on the Left Bank of the city, close to the riverside, down a narrow, winding alley. The shop’s exterior was old and dusty, as if it had not been cleaned in many years. Inside it was lit entirely by candlelight. The smells as you came through the door were incredible: a heady mixture of old cheeses, sweet spices and drying herbs mingling with the sweaty, garlicky aroma of dried sausages and cured meats.
‘Edibles’ sold exactly 653 different varieties of cheese, including the first cheeses ever made and one from the Middle Ages that was so revoltingly smelly it had to be kept bound in chains and suppressed with a heavy weight.
Among the cured meats were sausages of Cockatrice and Pomegranate, Manticore and Stinging Nettle, Allosaurus and Black Pepper, alongside Whole Spiced Tyrannosaurus Claws and Honey-Glazed Harpy Wings.
Lining the walls were tall shelves packed with bottles and glass containers, with their contents written on the labels in fine, purple script: Devilled Chimera Kidneys with Habanero Chilli, Pickled Swedish Lake Monster in Horseradish Vinegar, Medieval Black Truffles preserved in Unicorn Sweat, and Jellied Basilisk Eyes cured in Dandelion Wine.
Placed on the highest shelf and positioned in such a way that it would require a tall ladder to reach it, was a delicacy contained in a little jar. It had neither a name nor any ingredients on the label as both of these were a secret, since it was Madame Pamplemousse’s special recipe, her greatest creation: the Most Incredible Edible Ever Tasted.
Madame Pamplemousse’s shop was by no means famous in Paris. The reasons for this were mysterious, although the simplest explanation was that Madame Pamplemousse liked it that way. She had no desire for fame or to have hordes of tourists trooping through her shop, as this would have spoilt the delicate flavour of her wares. However, Madame Pamplemousse did have a number of regular customers, colleagues and suppliers, who together formed a loose company, a circle of friends. They were a group of philosophers and cooks, artists and musicians, who would often meet in secret beneath the streets of Montmartre. They met in a disused station, in what had once been part of the Paris métro, and this was why the group’s members sometimes called themselves ‘the Underground’.
Apart from Madame Pamplemousse and Camembert, their members included the famous restaurant critic Monsieur Langoustine, the famous scientist Monsieur Moutarde, and a jazz pianist by the name of Monsieur Croque, who played music of aching beauty, but would only perform in the dark, since his face was so hideous. It was, in fact, so grotesque that some people claimed he was not even human but a stray gargoyle that had escaped from the roof of Notre-Dame.
The most recent – and youngest – member of the Underground was Madeleine. She had been recommended by Madame Pamplemousse, who believed that she needed the group’s protection, for she had detected in Madeleine the beginnings of a great talent: a rare genius for cookery that was on a par with her own.
Madeleine had been initiated into many of the group’s secrets, including the secret of time travel. This was a discovery of Monsieur Moutarde, who had invented a device called the Taste-Automated Space-Time Déjà-Vu Generator. He kept this device hidden in a café, concealed as an espresso coffee machine, but on a certain setting it produced a liquid that could transport you through time and space. Last autumn Madeleine had gone time travelling with Madame Pamplemousse and Camembert. But since then a new term at school had begun, and Madeleine had not seen either of them since.
Madeleine had only started at the school the previous term. This was during a time of great change in her life. She had just moved to Paris after being adopted by a couple called the Cornichons and now lived with them above their restaurant, the Hungry Snail. But last summer, Madeleine had also become famous throughout the city thanks to her exceptional talent. The papers had called her ‘Paris’s new gastronomic star’ and she had received many invitations to appear on television cookery shows. On the advice of the Underground, Madeleine would always decline these offers, in order to remain as anonymous as possible. However, she found that her fame did have certain advantages, especially when it came to starting a new school.
Madeleine was not a naturally outgoing sort of person, but because she was a celebrity, people felt they knew her already. Everyone wanted to be her friend and all the different school gangs had invited her to join them. She soon made two close friends called Almondine and Cerise, who were themselves part of a larger group that used to play together in break-time. Much to her surprise, Madeleine found she was not only popular but one of the coolest people in the school.
But then the winter term started and a new girl arrived.
Her name was Mirabelle. To begin with, Madeleine made an effort to be welcoming. She sympathised with her predicament, having been the new girl herself the term before. She introduced Mirabelle to her friends and invited her to sit with them at their table in the canteen.
For someone new to the school, the canteen could be quite a frightening place. Madeleine had always hated it. Even though she had friends, she was always secretly afraid that one day they would desert her, leaving her to eat lunch by herself. But if Mirabelle was afraid, she certainly never showed it. She seemed perfectly at ease in the canteen and fitted into the group as if she had always been a member.
Mirabelle looked rather like a child model from the pages of a magazine. Madeleine could imagine her advertising Rollerblades, or perhaps a new brand of yogurt. She was dark and pretty, in a conventional sort of way, wore fashionable clothes and had perfectly cut hair. She was chatty and charismatic, supremely confident and the kind of person Madeleine had always wanted to be.
Madeleine had never been that confident herself. She was much too sensitive, always being acutely aware of how other people were feeling. But while this really ought to have helped her make friends, in practice it just made her more shy and self-conscious. Mirabelle, however, was not in the least bit shy. Nor did she seem to care whether anybody liked her or not, and, as a consequence, proved enormously popular.
In the time that followed, Madeleine would often look back to that first day of term. It seemed incredible that she had been the one who introduced Mirabelle to the group. It took a while, though, before it became clear that Mirabelle was trying to take her place. To begin with, Mirabelle was never openly rude to her or unpleasant in any way. It was just little things that Madeleine noticed; the way Mirabelle never quite seemed able to remember her name; or, when playing games, how she would always leave her out when allocating the teams.
Then Mirabelle began meeting Madeleine’s friends after school, but would somehow always forget to include Madeleine. Again, Madeleine was never actively excluded. If she had been more confident, she could easily have invited herself. But then confidence was not Madeleine’s strongest characteristic.
At first she kept wondering if it was just her imagination; perhaps she was being too sensitive. Except she could not help but feel that Mirabelle was preying upon a weakness. Madeleine had always felt slightly insecure in the group due to having no actual best friend. Cerise and Almondine were her two closest friends, but they had known each other long before Madeleine arrived.
By the third week of term she realised it was not her imagination, but by then it was too late, because that was when the real bullying began.
It started quite suddenly one freezing cold Monday. She had arrived late, in a fluster, having run from the métro. She went to her usual seat beside Almondine and Cerise and started telling them about her morning, but neither of them replied. She thought they had not heard and so spoke louder, but still they did not answer. Instead they looked at each other, raising their eyebrows as if to say, ‘Who is this annoying girl?’
As the morning wore on, so did Madeleine’s state of anxiety. She was entirely unable to concentrate and when the teacher, Madame Poulet, asked her a question, she had to repeat it three times.
‘The answer’s not outside the window, Madeleine!’ she said, much to the amusement of the class.
By lunchtime, the situation had worsened considerably. All Madeleine’s secret fears about the canteen had come true. Throughout the entire lunch break, not a single person spoke to her. However, she felt certain they were all talking about her, as she could see people glancing at her, whispering and giggling.
That was the day when Madame Bonbon found Madeleine crying in the cathedral. But it was not the actual bullying that made her cry: it was the feeling of shame. She had wanted so badly to ask for Madame Pamplemousse’s help, but realised she could not, for it was her disappointment that Madeleine feared most of all.
Madame Pamplemousse and the Enchanted Sweet Shop Page 1