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Back The Lollipop Shoes
Chapters (96)
  1. Cover
  2. About the Book
  3. The Lollipop Shoes
  4. Dedication
  5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  6. PART ONE
  7. 1
  8. 2
  9. 3
  10. 4
  11. 5
  12. PART TWO
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. 6
  19. 7
  20. 8
  21. PART THREE
  22. 1
  23. 2
  24. 3
  25. 4
  26. 5
  27. 6
  28. PART FOUR
  29. 1
  30. 2
  31. 3
  32. 4
  33. 5
  34. 6
  35. 7
  36. 8
  37. 9
  38. PART FIVE
  39. 1
  40. 2
  41. 3
  42. 4
  43. 5
  44. 6
  45. 7
  46. 8
  47. 9
  48. 10
  49. 11
  50. 12
  51. PART SIX
  52. 1
  53. 2
  54. 3
  55. 4
  56. 5
  57. 6
  58. 7
  59. 8
  60. 9
  61. 10
  62. 11
  63. 12
  64. PART SEVEN
  65. 1
  66. 2
  67. 3
  68. 4
  69. 5
  70. 6
  71. 7
  72. 8
  73. 9
  74. PART EIGHT
  75. 1
  76. 2
  77. 3
  78. 4
  79. 5
  80. 6
  81. 7
  82. 8
  83. 9
  84. 10
  85. 11
  86. 12
  87. 13
  88. 14
  89. 15
  90. 16
  91. 17
  92. 18
  93. 19
  94. Epilogue
  95. About the Author
  96. Also by Joanne Harris

And we did. While Maman prepared dinner and I took Rosette to see the Nativity again, Zozie worked on the room upstairs. It didn’t take her more than an hour; but when I went up later to see, you wouldn’t have recognized the place. The old-lady brown-patterned curtains were gone, replaced by a couple of big loose squares of sari material, one red, one blue. She’d used another one (this one was purple, with silver thread) to cover the fluffy old-lady bedspread, and there was a double string of little coloured lights over the mantelpiece, where she’d lined up her shoes pair by pair, like ornaments above the fire.

There was a rag rug, too, and a lamp where she’d hung all her earrings like danglers from the bottom of the shade, and one of her hats was pinned to the wall where a picture used to be; and there was a Chinese silk dressing-gown hanging behind the door, and a row of jewelled butterflies, like the ones she sometimes wears in her hair, clipped all around the edges of the plaguey mirror.

‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I love this room.’

And there was a scent, too; something very sweet and churchy that reminded me somehow of Lansquenet.

‘That’s frankincense, Nanou,’ she said. ‘I always burn it in my rooms.’

It was proper incense, too; the kind you burn over hot coals. We used to burn it, Maman and I, though nowadays we never do. Too messy, perhaps; but it smells so good, and besides, Zozie’s kind of disorder seems to make more sense than anyone else’s idea of tidiness.

Then Zozie brought out a bottle of grenadine from somewhere at the bottom of her suitcase, and we all had a kind of party downstairs, with chocolate cake and ice cream for Rosette, and by the time I was ready for bed, it was nearly midnight, and Rosette was asleep on a beanbag, and Maman was clearing the dishes away. And as I looked at Zozie then, Zozie with her long hair and her bracelet with all the little charms, and her eyes lit up like fairy-lights, it was just like seeing Maman again, but the way she was in Lansquenet, in the days when she was still Vianne Rocher.

‘So what do you think of my Advent house?’