Page 15 of Vianne

Another week at La Bonne Mère, and I have learnt to make six more dishes: pan-fried trout in butter sauce; seafood tempura with aioli ; Margot’s grandmother’s crème br?lée with spiced apricot compote; Margot’s mother’s pot-au-feu , with beans and new potatoes, and Guy’s chocolate ganache cake, which I presented (rather anxiously) at lunch yesterday, alongside a more traditional lemon tart from Margot’s book of recipes.

Louis looked dubiously at the cake, but Emile took two pieces, and Marinette swore it was almost as good as the ones in the patisserie window.

‘Your friend Lacarrière teach you this?’ said Louis, who had still not tried the cake.

I nodded. ‘He’s teaching me how to make chocolates.’

Louis shrugged. ‘Well, if you enjoy it—’

I take this as permission. And yet he’s oddly reluctant to try my chocolate recipes.

And although Louis has permitted me to do some cleaning around the place, the kitchen still belongs to Margot and keeps her memory alive.

I understand his reluctance to change, having recently lost someone dear to me, and yet after years of mourning her, doesn’t he deserve happiness?

Doesn’t he deserve to love? It suddenly occurs to me that this is what the cards were trying to tell me that night.

Not a warning, but a direction – a means of giving me a goal.

This is how I become Vianne: this is how I escape the past. Not by running away, but by helping this man who has helped me.

The Lovers. That must be Louis and Margot, flanked by the Six of Sorrows.

The Hermit: that’s Louis as he is now, surly and withdrawn.

The Four of Cups; La Bonne Mère, bonded in grief like a creature in amber.

And Change – that must be me, I think. Change, like the dance of the seasons.

Change, like the turn of a friendly card; as simple as a passing cloud: as bittersweet as chocolate.

‘I’ll bring you some more coffee,’ I said, and went into the kitchen.

The little jar of chocolate spice was there, on a shelf, with the spices.

The label read: Xocolatl . Of course, that’s the name of the chocolate shop, but I sense it means something more to Guy.

The word for chocolate is the same in every language in the world, he says, with a few spelling variants: and every variant comes from this, the Nahuatl name, brought back by the Spanish invaders.

There’s power in these things, I know; power in the stories.

And there’s power in desire; power in the passion of dreams.

I opened the jar. Guy’s xocolatl smells of the ground after a short, hot fall of rain; of spices ground by hand in the dirt; of perfumes known to me only from stories.

Here was vanilla, silphium, cardamom, ginger, and saffron.

Here was cassia, star anise, fennel, mace and turmeric.

But here too were stories of the great chocolate kings: Montezuma, Moctezuma, Itzcoatl, and Tizoc.

My newly enhanced sense of smell could sense all this and more in the jar; carefully, I took a pinch and added it to the pot of coffee.

Then I poured a cup of the brew, and took it out into the bar.

‘Try this.’

Louis looked at his cup suspiciously.

I smiled. ‘Just try it. I made a new blend.’

He shrugged and picked up the little cup. Drank his coffee slowly.

‘Do you like it?’

He gave a shrug. ‘It’s coffee.’ But he finished it, and I saw that his colours had shifted from sullen green to sunny rose-gold, and thought to myself: it works, it works , and hid my smile behind my hand.

And this morning, at breakfast, I added a pinch of xocolatl to the foam in Louis’ café-crème , and a pinch to Emile’s café noir , and to the pot of hot chocolate I made to go with the croissants, and the scent was so beguiling that half my regulars tried a cup, and some came back for a second.

‘Hot chocolate at breakfast,’ said Emile with a sneer that somehow combined greed with contempt. ‘What are we now, children?’

I smiled at him. ‘I tried something new. Maybe you could do the same.’

Emile shrugged. ‘I’ll try it, for free.’

It’s easy, when you know what to do. Guy showed me the recipe. Milk, in a copper-bottomed pan. A scoop of grated chocolate. A generous pinch of the chocolate spice. All served in tiny espresso cups and flanked with fresh pastries and butter.

‘On the house, Emile,’ I said.

I saw Louis’ eyebrow shoot up. I said, too low for Emile to hear: ‘Trust me. It’s just an experiment. Let’s see if there’s a demand.’