Chapters (96)
‘I’m so sorry.’ I put my hand on her arm. I’m wearing short sleeves, and my charm-bracelet, laden with its tiny figures, makes its heavy chinking sound. The shine of silver catches her eye—
The little cat charm has gone black with age, more like the One Jaguar of Black Tezcatlipoca than the cheap shiny bauble it once was.
She sees it and stiffens, thinking almost at once that it’s absurd, that such coincidences do not happen, that it’s only a cheap charm-bracelet and that it could have nothing at all to do with the long-lost baby bangle and its little silver kittycat—
But oh! What if it could, she thinks. You hear about these things sometimes – not always in movies, but sometimes in life—
‘That’s a-an interesting b-bracelet.’ Her voice is shaking so much now that she can hardly say the words.
‘Thanks. I’ve had it for years.’
‘Oh, really?’
I nod. ‘Each of these charms is a reminder of something. This was when my mother died . . .’ I point out a charm shaped like a coffin. It’s from Mexico City, in fact – I must have got it in some piñata or other – and there’s a little black cross on the coffin-lid.
‘Your mother?’
‘Well, I called her that. I never knew my birth parents. This key was for my twenty-first. And this cat is my oldest, luckiest charm. I’ve had it all my life, I think, even before I was adopted.’
She stares at me now, almost paralysed. It’s impossible, and she knows it – but something less rational in her insists that miracles happen, magic exists. It’s the voice of the woman she used to be, the one who – aged barely nineteen – fell in love with a man of thirty-two who told her he loved her, and whom she believed.
And what about that little girl? Didn’t she recognize something in her? Something that pulls and tears at her heart like a kitten tormenting a ball of string—
Some people – myself, for instance – are born to be cynics. But once a believer, always a believer. I sense that Madame is one of these; have known it, in fact, from the moment I saw those porcelain dolls in the lobby of Le Stendhal. She’s an ageing romantic, embittered, disappointed and therefore all the more vulnerable, and her piñata needs only a word from me to open up like a flower.
A word? I meant a name, of course.
‘I have to shut up shop, Madame.’ I propel her gently towards the door. ‘But if you’d like to come again – we’re having a party on Christmas Eve. If you don’t have any other plans, perhaps you’d like to drop in for an hour?’
She looks at me with eyes like stars.
‘Oh, yes,’ she whispers. ‘Thank you. I will.’
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