She frowns, as if she’s trying to remember something that’s just on the tip of her tongue. And her eyes brim with tears as she looks up at the copper pan cooling on the stove.

Try me. Taste me. A last sad fading perfume, like a ghost of childhood on the air.

Try me. Taste me. A skinned knee; a small damp palm with chocolate dust imprinted into lifeline and heartline.

Taste me. Test me. A memory of both of them lying in bed, a picture book on the blanket between them, Anouk laughing wildly at something Vianne said . . .

Once more I cast the sign of Mictecacihuatl, old Lady Death, the Gobbler of Hearts, like black fireworks into her path. It’s getting late; Madame’s tale will be done and very soon they will miss us both.

Anouk looks dazed, watching the stove with a look of one half in a dream. Through the Smoking Mirror I can now see the cause: a small grey shape sitting by the pan, a blur that might be whiskers, a tail—

‘Well?’ I ask. ‘Are you coming or not?’

13

Monday, 24th December
Christmas Eve. 11.05 p.m.

‘I LIVED DOWN the hall from Jeanne Rocher.’ her voice had the typical clipped vowels of the native Parisienne, like Stiletto heels rapping out the words. ‘She was a little older than me, and she earned her money doing Tarot readings and helping people to quit smoking. I went to her once, a couple of weeks before my daughter was taken. She told me I’d been thinking of having her adopted. I called her a liar. All the same, it was true.’

She carried on, her expression bleak. ‘It was a bedsit flat in Neuilly-Plaisance. Half an hour from the centre of Paris. I had an old 2CV, two waitressing jobs at local cafés and the occasional handout from Sylviane’s father, who by then I’d realized would never leave his wife. I was twenty-one and my life was over. Childcare ate what little I earned; I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her . . .’

The image of that little cat charm flashes briefly through my mind. There’s something touching about it, somehow, the silver charm with its lucky red ribbon. Did Zozie steal that too? Perhaps she did. Perhaps that’s how she fooled Madame Caillou, her harsh face softened now with the memory of her loss.

‘It was two weeks later that she disappeared. I left her for two minutes, that’s all – Jeanne Rocher must have been watching me, biding her time. When I thought to look for her she’d packed up and left, and there was no proof. But I always wondered—’ She turned to me, her face alight. ‘And then I met your friend Zozie, with her little girl, and I knew, I knew—’