Back in the kitchen, late that night, I put her school clothes in the washing machine. For a moment I hold them to my face, as if they might retain some part of her that I have lost. They smell of the outside, and of the incense smoke from Zozie’s rooms, and of the maltbiscuity scent of her sweat. I feel like a woman searching her lover’s clothes for signs of infidelity—

And in the pocket of her jeans, I find something that she has forgotten to take out. It’s a doll made from a wooden clothes-peg, the same kind of doll that she has been making for the window display. But looking at this one more closely, I can recognize who it’s meant to be; I can see the marks drawn on it in felt-tip pen, and the three red hairs tied around the waist, and if I narrow my eyes, then I can see the glow that surrounds it, so faint and so very familiar that I might almost have missed it otherwise . . .

Once more I go to the Advent window, where tomorrow’s scene is already set. The door opens into the dining-room, and everyone is gathered around the table, where a chocolate cake stands ready to be cut. There are tiny candles on the table, and tiny plates and glasses, and now that I look more carefully I can recognize almost everyone there – Fat Nico, Zozie, little Alice in her big boots, Madame Pinot with her crucifix, Madame Luzeron in her funeral coat, Rosette, myself, even Laurent – and Thierry, who has not been invited, standing under the snow-covered trees.

And all of them marked with that golden gleam—

Such a small thing—

Such a huge thing.

But there’s surely no harm in a game, I think. Games are how children make sense of the world; and stories, even the darkest of them, are the means with which they learn to cope – with loss, with cruelty, with death—

But there is more to this little tableau. The family-and-friends-at-the-table scene – the candles; the tree; the chocolate log – are all contained inside the house. Outside, the scene is different. Heavy snow in the form of icing-sugar has gathered on the ground and the trees. The lake with its ducks is frozen now; the sugar mice with their hymn-sheets have gone, and long, murderous icicles – sugar-spun, but glassy-sharp – now hang from the branches of the trees.

Thierry is standing right under them, and a dark chocolate snowman, big as a bear, is watching him menacingly from the forest close by.

I look more closely at the little peg-doll. Uncannily, it looks like Thierry; his clothes, his hair, his mobile phone, even his expression somehow, depicted by an ambivalent line and a couple of dots for eyes.