The cemetery; a broad gravestone of pale grey marble, shaped like the curve of an ocean wave. I saw the picture set into the stone: a boy of thirteen or so, grinning brashly and toothily at the camera. A school photograph, perhaps, the last one taken before his death, shot in black-and-white but tinted in pastel shades for the occasion. And underneath it there are the chocolates; rows of little boxes, wasted by the rain. One for every Thursday, lying untouched; beribboned in yellow and pink and green . . .

I look up. She is staring – but not at me. Her frightened, exhausted pale-blue eyes are wide and strangely hopeful.

‘I’ll be late,’ she says in a small voice.

‘You’ve got time,’ says Zozie gently. ‘Sit down awhile. Rest your feet. Nico and Alice were just leaving. Come on,’ she insists, as Madame seems about to protest. ‘Sit down and have some chocolate. It’s raining, and your boy can wait.’

And to my amazement, Madame obeys.

‘Thank you,’ she says, and sits down in her chair, looking ludicrously out of place against the bright-pink leopard print, and eats her chocolate, eyes closed, head resting against the fluffy fake fur.

And she looks so peaceful – and yes, so happy.

And outside, the wind rattles the newly painted sign, and the rain sizzles down on the cobbled streets, and December is only a heartbeat away, and it feels so safe and so solid that I can almost forget that our walls are made of paper; our lives of glass; that a gust of wind could shatter us; that a winter storm could blow us away.

5

Friday, 23rd November

I SHOULD HAVE known she’d helped them along. It’s what I might have done myself, once, in the days of Lansquenet. First, Alice and Nico, so oddly alike; and I happen to know that he’s noticed her before, calls in at the florist’s once a week to buy daffodils (his favourite), but has never yet found the courage to speak to her or to ask her out.

Now suddenly, over chocolate—

Coincidence, I tell myself.

And now Madame Luzeron, once so brittle and self-contained; releasing her secrets like scent from a bottle that everyone thought had dried up long ago.

And that sunny glow around the door – even when it’s raining – leads me to fear that someone may have been easing things along; that the stream of customers we’ve had over the past few days is not due entirely to our confectionery.

I know what my mother would say.

Where’s the harm? No one gets hurt. Don’t they deserve it, Vianne?

Don’t we?