Vianne uses it too, referring to things unwanted or unexplained. As if there were any such thing in our world, where everything is linked to everything else, everything touching in small mystic ways, like skeins of silk in a tapestry. Nothing is ever an accident; nobody is ever lost. And we special ones – the ones who can see – moving through life collecting the threads, bringing them together, weaving little deliberate patterns of our own in the borders of the big picture—

How fabulous is that, Nanou? How fabulous, and subversive, and beautiful, and grand? Don’t you want to be a part of it? To find your own destiny in that tangle of threads – and to shape it – not by accident, but by design?

She found me in the kitchen five minutes later. By then she was pale with suppressed rage. I know how it feels; that sick-to-the-stomach, sick-to-the-soul, lurching sense of helplessness.

‘You have to make them go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want them here when Maman gets back.’

What she meant was I don’t want to give them any more ammunition.

I looked sympathetic. ‘They’re customers. What can I do?’

She looked at me.

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘They’re your friends.’

‘They’re not!’

‘Oh. Then—’ I pretended to hesitate. ‘Then it wouldn’t be so much of an Accident if you and I – interfered a little.’

Her colours flared at the very thought. ‘Maman says it’s dangerous . . .’

‘Maman has her reasons, perhaps.’

‘What reasons?’

I shrugged. ‘Well, Nanou, adults sometimes withhold knowledge from their kids when they’re trying to protect them. And sometimes they’re not so much protecting the child as protecting themselves from the consequences of that knowledge . . .’

She looked puzzled at that. ‘You think she lied to me?’ she said.

It was a risk, I knew that. But I’ve taken my fair share of risks – and besides, she wants to be seduced. It’s the rebel in the soul of every good child; the desire to flaunt authority; to overthrow those little gods that call themselves our parents.

Annie sighed. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘Oh, yes I do. You’re scared,’ I said. ‘You’re scared of being different. You think it makes you stand out.’

She thought about that for a while.

‘That’s not it,’ she said at last.

‘Then what?’ I said.

She looked at me. Behind the door to the shop I could hear the glassy, squealing voices of teenage girls up to no good.

I gave her my most sympathetic smile. ‘You know, they’re never going to leave you alone. They know where you are now. They could come back anytime. They’ve already had a go at Nico—’

I saw her flinch. I know how much she likes him.

‘Do you want them back here every night? Sitting there, laughing at you?’

‘Maman would make them go away,’ she said, though she didn’t sound too sure.