Does she recognize something, perhaps? Could it be that the vein of talent that runs so richly in Vianne and Anouk has left some vestige here at the source? Anouk gives her beaming smile. Madame smiles back, hesitantly at first, but as the conjunction of Blood Moon and Rabbit Moon joins the pull of One Jaguar, her doughy face becomes almost beautiful in its longing.

‘And who’s this?’ she says.

‘It’s my little Nanou.’

That’s all I need to say. Whether or not Madame can see something familiar in the child, or whether it is simply Anouk herself, with her Dutch-doll face and Byzantine hair, that has captured her, who can say? But Madame’s eyes have grown suddenly bright, and when I suggest that she stay for a cup of chocolate (and perhaps one of my special truffles on the side), she accepts the invitation without a murmur, and, sitting at one of the hand-printed tables, she stares with an intensity that is far beyond mere hunger at Anouk as she goes in and out of the kitchen; greets Nico as he passes the door and calls him in for a cup of tea; plays with Rosette and her box of buttons; talks about the birthday tomorrow; runs outside to check for snow; runs back inside; peers at the changes to the Advent house; rearranges a key figure or two, then checks for snow again – it will come, it must come at least for Christmas Eve, because she loves snow almost more than anything . . .

It’s time to close the shop. In fact, it’s twenty minutes past our closing time when Madame seems to shake herself free of some daze.

‘What a sweet little girl you have,’ she says as she stands up, brushes the chocolate crumbs from her lap and looks wistfully at the kitchen door, through which Anouk has already gone, taking Rosette with her at last. ‘She plays with the other one just like a sister.’

That makes me smile, but I don’t put her right.

‘Got any kids of your own?’ I say.

She seems to hesitate. Then she nods. ‘A daughter,’ she says.

‘Going to see her this Christmas?’

Oh, the anguish such a question may inadvertently cause – I see it in her colours, a pure streak of brilliant white that cuts like lightning across the rest.

She shakes her head, not trusting the words. Even now, after so many years, the feeling still has the power to surprise her with its immediacy. When will it fade, as so many people have promised it will? So far it has not – that grief that overrides everything else, sending lover, mother, friend plunging into insignificance in the face of the desolate chasm that is the loss of a child—

‘I lost her,’ she says in a quiet voice.