And now I can see something else. An image, an icon, presented here with more clarity than an eleven-year-old child could possibly articulate. I see it for less than a second, but even so it is enough. It’s the Nativity scene on Place du Tertre, the mother, the father and the crib.

But in this version of the scene, the mother is wearing a red dress, and the father’s hair is the same colour—

And at last, I begin to understand. That’s why she wants this party so much; that’s why she lavishes so much attention on the little peg-dolls in the Advent house, grouping, positioning them with as much care and attention as she would have given the real thing.

Look at Thierry outside the house. He has no role to play in this strange re-enactment. Then there are the visitors – the Magi, the shepherds, the angels. Nico, Alice, Madame Luzeron, Jean-Louis, Paupaul, Madame Pinot. They serve as the Greek chorus: to give encouragement and support. Then there is the central group. Anouk, Rosette, Roux, Vianne—

What was the first thing she said to me?

Who died? My mother. Vianne Rocher.

I took it as a kind of joke, a child’s attempt to be provocative. But knowing Anouk a little better now, I begin to see how serious those seemingly flippant words might be. The old priest and the social worker were not the only casualties of that December wind, four years ago. Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk died just as surely on that day, and now she wants to bring them back—

How alike we are, Nanou.

You see, I too need another life. Françoise Lavery dogs me still. Tonight’s local paper showed her again, now otherwise known as Mercedes Desmoines and Emma Windsor, among other aliases, and showing two blurry pictures taken from CCTV. You see, Annie, I have Kindly Ones of my own, and they may be slow, but they are unwavering, and their pursuit of me now goes beyond irksome into something that almost threatens me.

How did they find out about Mercedes? And how did they catch up with Françoise so soon? And how long do you think it will be before even Zozie falls to their relentlessness?

Perhaps it’s time, I tell myself. Perhaps I’ve exhausted Paris at last. Glamours aside, perhaps the time has come for me to take to another set of roads. But not as Zozie. Not any more.

If someone offered you a whole new life, wouldn’t you take it?

Of course you would.

And if that life could offer you adventure, riches and a child – not just any child, but this beautiful, promising, talented child, untouched as yet by the hand of karma, that sends every bad thought and questionable deed straight back at you with threefold strength – something to toss to the Kindly Ones when at last there’s nothing else—