You choose your family, Mother said. As I chose you and you chose me. That girl – she wouldn’t have cherished you. She wouldn’t have known how to care for you: how to slice the apple widthways to show the star inside, how to tie a medicine bag, how to banish demons by banging on a tin pan, how to sing the wind to sleep. She wouldn’t have taught you any of that—

And didn’t we do OK, Vianne? Didn’t I promise we’d be OK?

I have it still, that little cat charm. I don’t remember the baby bangle – probably she sold it or gave it away – but I half-remember the toys, a red plush elephant and a small brown bear, much-loved and missing an eye. And the charm is still there in my mother’s box, a cheap thing, such as a child might buy, tied with a piece of red ribbon. It’s there with her cards, and a few other things: a photograph of us taken when I was six, a stash of sandalwood, some newspaper clippings, a ring. A drawing I did at my first school – my only school – in the days when we were still going to settle down someday.

Of course I never wear it. I don’t even like to touch it now; there are too many secrets locked in there, like scent that needs only human warmth to release it. As a rule I don’t touch anything in that box – and yet I don’t quite dare to throw it away. Too much ballast slows you down – but too little and I could blow away like a dandelion seed, losing myself for ever on the wind.

Zozie has been with me for four days now, and already her personality has begun to affect everything she touches. I don’t know how it happened – a temporary moment of weakness, perhaps. I certainly hadn’t intended to offer her a job. For a start, I can’t afford to pay her much, though she’s happy to wait until I can – and it seems so natural for her to be here, as if she has been with me all my life.

It began on the day of the Accident – the day she made the chocolate, and drank it with me in the kitchen, hot and sweet with fresh chillies and chocolate curls. Rosette drank some in her little mug, then played on the floor as I sat in silence – Zozie watching me with that smile, and her eyes all narrowed like a cat’s.

The circumstances were exceptional. On any other day, at any other time, I would have been better prepared. But on that day – with Thierry’s ring still in my pocket, and Rosette at her worst, and Anouk so quiet since she heard, and the long empty day stretching ahead—

At any other time, I would have held fast. But on that day—