BooksBarbecue
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 so the mother set the table with another place for the visitor.

‘I’ll make dinner,’ said the Queen. ‘I know all your favourites.’

‘We’ll both make dinner,’ said the mother. ‘And then my daughter will decide.’

‘My daughter,’ said the witch. ‘And I think I know the way to her heart.’

Well, the mother was a good cook. And she had never worked harder over a meal – not at Easter, not at Yule. But the witch had magic on her side, and her glamours were very powerful. The mother knew all the child’s favourites – but the Queen knew those she had yet to discover, and she set them effortlessly on the table, one by one, throughout the meal.

They began with a winter soup, lovingly cooked in a copper pot with a shin-bone left over from Sunday lunch—

But the witch brought in a light bouillon, simmered with the sweetest of baby shallots and scented with ginger and lemongrass and served with croutons so crisp and small that they seemed to vanish in her mouth—

The mother brought in the second course. Sausages and potato mash; a comforting dish the child always loved, with sticky onion marmalade—

But the witch brought in a brace of quail that had been gorged on ripe figs all their lives, now roasted and stuffed with chestnuts and foie gras and served with a coulis of pomegranate—

Now the mother was close to despair. She brought dessert: a stout apple pie, made to her mother’s recipe.

But the witch had made a pièce montée: a pastelcoloured sugared dream of almonds, summer fruit and pastries like a puff of air, all scented with rose and marshmallow cream, and served with a glass of Château d’Yquem—

And the mother said: ‘All right. You win,’ as her heart just snapped clean in two, with a sound like popcorn in the pan. And the witch smiled and reached for her prey—

But the daughter did not return her embrace. Instead she fell to her knees on the floor.

‘Mother, don’t die. I know it’s you.’

And the Queen of Hearts gave a scream of rage as she realized that even now, in the moment of her triumph, the child’s heart was still not hers. And she screamed so loudly and so furiously that her head exploded like a fair-day balloon, and the Queen of Hearts in her terminal wrath became the queen of nothing at all.

As for the ending of the tale—