Page 25 of Vianne

The rest of the album was mostly entries in Margot’s handwriting. Recipes, for the most part, and spells; and cramped little diary entries.

My little Edmond is three months old; about the size of a plum, they say. Fingernails and earlobes formed. Every night, take valerian tea for restful sleep and healing. And make sure now to speak his name. A named thing is a claimed thing.

My little Edmond is four months old. Louis says I should have a scan to make sure my baby is normal.

He’s afraid: he doesn’t know how we would cope with a damaged child.

But Edmond is already perfect. Already he’s a miracle.

I wish Louis could see it that way. I wish he could let himself love our child without being afraid to lose him.

I can hear her voice so clearly in these diary entries.

Clearer than in her recipes, although that’s where I heard it first. But Margot’s recipes are all the voices of her family: her grandmother’s pot-au-feu; her mother’s apple turnover, her great-grandmother’s cherry eau-de-vie , made with the cherries from her own tree.

And for Edmond, a special dish: a plum cake, like a clafoutis , with Armagnac and cinnamon.

Recipes are like children , I’d said, on the day of the bouillabaisse.

Strange words, from a girl whose experience of cooking came largely from boiling noodles in the kettles of strange hotels, or making soup from packets, or mixing salad dressings.

And yet I understand it. Perhaps because I understand her .

They live on, even when we are gone. And Margot’s voice – through her cookery book, and now through this baby album – is strong and warm and comforting, and filled with hope for the future.

Five months now, and my little Edmond is able to hear my voice. I like to read him poetry and sing him lullabies at night so he won’t get lost in the dark. This time, I’m sure. I know he’ll come. My Edmond is strong. He will find me.

She was so sure her child was a boy. Just as I know my Anouk is a girl; knew it almost from the first, when she was still a seedling.

Is that why she named him so early? A named thing is a claimed thing.

It’s the kind of thing my mother would have said, as we moved from country to country, changing our names as we did our clothes, to suit the needs of the journey.

But what did naming him mean to Margot? A gesture of defiance?

A prayer? Or rather, a cry in the face of God, who had claimed so many children?

That list of names in her cookbook. Did she name the others, too?

Or was Edmond the only one that she had truly claimed for herself?

And why had the woman from Rue du Panier had this book for so many years, when surely it should belong to Louis?

Louis still refuses to use his name. He thinks it’s bad luck to name this child before it’s born.

It might still die. Or worse, he says: be born with some genetic defect.

It’s common, with women of my age. To name him is to claim him, I say, but Louis doesn’t understand.

His fear for me makes him angry these days.

He barely talks to me any more. But love comes in threes.

It completes us. Without a child, there will always be a part of me that stays empty.

Near the end, her writing grows more straggling and untidy. I sense her impatience, her fatigue; I understand her frustration.

Only two months to go now. My little Edmond is almost the size of a cantaloupe melon.

And hungry; I can feel him now, dreaming of my kitchen.

Light a yellow candle at dusk, and scatter salt by the doorway.

Pray to Bonne Mère in her incarnation as Ixcacao: burn cedarwood and dragon’s blood to ward off the gaze of the Shadowless Man.

And finally, on the last page, in letters so shaky I can hardly read them, she has written:

My dearest Edmond. I love you more than words can say.

Look after your father. He’s a good man, but stubborn.

He never believed that love alone could accomplish anything.

You’ll have to change his mind, Edmond. Love him for both of us when I’m gone.

Except that I’ll never really be gone, not while you’re still in the world.

My Edmond, I’m leaving this book in the care of a friend who will help you.

I hope we can read it together one day. But if we can’t, remember this: you were always the best of me.

Your loving mother,

Marguerite

It is the last page in the book. But stuck to the inside cover, there is a piece of paper; this time showing a footprint, neatly inked onto the page.

Almost too tiny to understand; even smaller than those bootees I bought from the woman on Rue du Panier, perfect in every detail, even to the tiny toes.

Underneath, someone has written: Edmond Lo?c Bien-Aimé Martin. 13 October 1973 .