Page 48 of Vianne

I got up to follow the others, but found Cécile at my elbow. ‘Wait,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I have something that belongs to you.’

I followed her into a back room that smelt of mould and sadness.

Shelves of provisions. Tinned goods; giant tubs of coffee.

A neon tube stuttered overhead, casting a cheerless brightness.

Cécile looked both sullen and jaded, as if bad things happened every day, and I was only one of them.

I thought she looked very tired, as if she, not I, had slept outside.

‘Are you okay?’ I said.

She flinched. People like Cécile often think that they deserve no better. Then she turned away from me and began to fuss with a shelf of tins. I waited there: some people need time.

Finally she turned and said: in a low, fierce voice: ‘Are you her ?’

I thought of the papers in my bag, papers that she might have seen. Then I saw her expression, and the colours threaded with longing, and understood her question.

Oh. The loss of a child is more than grief: it is the loss of a piece of yourself; a thing that can never be replaced. Her child – Ondine , in her secret heart – has made of her an empty room, with all doors open to the wind.

‘I’m sorry. I’m not your daughter.’

She sagged. ‘But you knew. You knew her name . And then when Guy said he knew you—’

‘You know Guy?’

‘I know his family. Everyone knows his family. And Sophie, of course.’ I remembered the woman in the high-heeled shoes, whom Cécile had greeted so warmly. ‘I thought you might have heard something. Or maybe you even knew her.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

Cécile was crying quietly. ‘I knew it wasn’t really you. But I dreamed of her last night. She looked like you. She’d be about your age by now. And now she’ll never, ever know how much I tried to keep her.’

I put my arms around her. She smelt of coffee and cigarettes. Very like my mother, in fact; as if the grief of losing her had somehow taken human form. I lost my mother. You lost your child. But love – love finds a way to stay. To shine, and to remember.

‘She knows,’ I said.

‘You think?’ Her eyes were blurred with mascara. ‘I mean, I don’t even know her name. Whoever adopted her will have changed it. Why would she care about me?’

I said: ‘I think that love stays in the world. It colours what it touches. Putting love into the world is more important than anything. You put it in, it comes back to you. It makes the world a better place.’

She laughed. ‘What good have I ever been? The one good thing I had, I lost. Worse than that. I gave it away.’

I shook my head. ‘You didn’t, Cécile. You’ve kept her in your heart all this time. Love has a way of finding us. And you deserve love, as does everyone.’

She looked at me. ‘You really believe that hippie crap?’

I smiled. ‘My mother taught me that. I hope I’ll teach my child the same.’

Cécile looked thoughtful. Her eyes were red, but her colours seemed to be clearing. ‘I wish I’d had your mother,’ she said. ‘Mine was a judgemental bitch. I sometimes think I’m like her.’

‘You don’t have to be,’ I said. ‘We can make our own recipe.’

She held my gaze for a moment. I caught the sudden fleeting scent of cacao powder, cardamom, black pepper, star anise – the scent of Guy’s xocolatl spice, clinging stubbornly to my palms. A potent blend, calling me back to my room at La Bonne Mère, and the blue sky on the Butte, and that feeling of possibility —

I had a sudden memory of Margot, in the kitchen.

Find him. Bring him home , she’d said. But instead of that, I had fled: and ever since, I had felt disconnected – to my life, to my child, to my future, to myself.

What had I missed, in my need to escape?

What promise had I left unfulfilled? Cécile reached into her pocket.

‘Here. I know I shouldn’t have kept these.

I’m sorry.’ And she brought out an envelope – my envelope with the two thousand francs – and a pair of knitted bootees.

But these were not pink. Instead, they were blue; blue as a fold of the Virgin’s robe.

Then I looked again, and they were the bootees I’d bought on Rue du Panier, still quaintly scented with lavender, delicate as spider silk, pink as eglantine blossom.

It was just the light, that’s all. Just the light in the storeroom.

And yet I knew I’d seen something real; as real as Margot’s voice from her book; as real as that footprint on the page.

And at last I understood why I had to go back to Marseille: why the doctor had seen a boy, and not a girl, in my future; why every step in pursuit of Vianne was also a step away from myself.

His name is Edmond. Find him, Vianne.

Margot’s son was still alive.