Page 53 of Vianne

I read the cards again last night, in my room above the shop.

Change. The Hermit. The Lovers. The Fool.

And now, at last, after all these weeks, a newcomer; the Nine of Cups, card of peace and fulfilment.

The picture in my mother’s pack shows the cups as flower-heads; petals shed, bellies swollen with the growth of the new seed.

Little Anouk inside me agrees; I made the right decision.

But at night, all my doubts return. Since my conversation with Louis, I have not been able to sleep.

Perhaps it’s the light at my window from the fat October moon; or the sounds in the alleyway, or the distant rumbling of the conching machine, day and night, spinning cacao into gold.

Whatever it was, I awoke last night to the moon shining in through the skylight.

A moon like half a pumpkin, casting golden shadows.

October is my favourite month: soon it will be Hallowe’en.

It’s a night we always celebrated, my mother and I.

It belonged to us. Other children had birthday cards and coloured candles on a cake: I had Tarot cards; black candles; incense on the day of the dead.

I was never afraid of death. If you keep moving, my mother said, death can never catch up with you.

Stay for only as long as it takes for dust to fall on the mantelpiece.

A single layer is all we leave before the Man in Black comes round.

I read somewhere that dust is mostly flakes of human skin.

How many layers of myself have I already left in this room?

How close am I to summoning the very thing we fled for so long?

These thoughts were what kept me awake; that and the memory of Louis, saying Margot died, and our son with her , while his colours said something different.

At Hallowe’en, she used to say, the skin of the world is paper-thin.

The voices of the dead can be heard whispering through its pages.

But it is not her voice, but Margot’s, that speaks to me now from between the worlds, telling me that to find myself, all I have to do is stop running.

I get up, pull on my dressing-gown and go down into the kitchen.

A cup of hot chocolate, I think, might help me off to sleep again.

There’s a comfort to be found in this most elementary of rituals: the heating of the whole milk in a copper saucepan; the adding of the nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, chilli powder.

Guy has taught me that chilli was what the Mayans used in chocolate; that cold and bitter forerunner of the drink we enjoy today.

Chilli has special properties: it’s a powerful antioxidant with antibiotic properties, and like Theobroma cacao , it boosts the immune system, lifts the mood and makes the senses more alert.

Chilli and chocolate are soulmates, just as some people are soulmates, bound together through centuries.

Heat the milk to a shiver, then add the grated chocolate : Guy only uses the darkest kind, but I prefer something sweeter.

Brown sugar to combat the heat, and cardamom, for freshness.

The vapour rising from the pan is ghostly in the darkness.

In the days before Hallowe’en, the dead gather around in readiness.

If I concentrate, I can see our faces in the vapour; the people we were, and will be again, reflecting each other down the years.

Narrowing my eyes, I see a stretch of river; some boats; a row of wooden shacks on stilts, straggling along the water’s edge.

My little Anouk with her candyfloss curls. And behind her, a man in black—

I banish the vapour. No more of that now. There are no ghosts as troubling as the ghosts of our possible selves.

‘Can’t sleep either?’ It was Guy. He moves surprisingly quietly; not even the vapour remembers him. ‘I’m sorry. Did I startle you?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m just tired.’

‘Sleep is overrated,’ Guy said, moving closer to inspect the contents of the copper pan. ‘And Mahmed snores.’ He grinned. ‘This smells good.’

I said; ‘I adapted your recipe.’

He poured the last of the chocolate into a small espresso cup. ‘Yes, I like this,’ he said. ‘It’s light. Not as strong as I make it. How are you feeling?’

‘Much better,’ I said, ‘since I started the supplements.’

He nodded. ‘I thought so. You look better, too. More relaxed.’ I was surprised. I hadn’t thought my anxiety would be so clearly perceptible. ‘You don’t need to worry, you know, Vianne. I want you to think of this place as home.’

I smiled. ‘That’s a word I don’t really use. I’ve always been – a traveller.’

He thought about that. ‘You know what’s weird?

I’ve never really travelled. I’d like to see Chichén Itzá, and the Temple of Kukulkan.

I’d like to see Sao Tomé, and the chocolate farms of Principe.

I’d like to see chocolate grow in the wild, and taste the fresh cacao pulp taken from the growing beans.

Instead, I travel this way—’ he made a gesture that encompassed the whole chocolaterie. ‘Through recipes and stories.’

‘I do that, too,’ I told him, thinking of the maps that marked my childhood. ‘I never really had a home. Just a series of passing places.’

He smiled. ‘My home was the opposite. A place so fixed and set in its ways that even the air was rationed. My only taste of freedom came when I went to visit my grandfather in Moncrabeau. I used to go there every year and stay with him over the summer. He used to pick me up in his car and take me with him, and every year, for a week or two, I used to pretend things were normal.’ He smiled.

‘It was Pépé who introduced me to the art of chocolate. He had a friend in a village nearby who ran a chocolaterie. I used to go there and watch them making all the different kinds of praline. I promised myself that’s what I would do, as soon as I could get away.

’ He paused for a moment. ‘But getting away isn’t as easy as it sounds.

My family all studied law. My sister was a natural.

’ He paused to look into the dregs of his cup, as if in search of answers.

‘I wish we could choose our families, instead of just being born to them.’

I thought of my mother. ‘I think we do.’

He looked at me. ‘Did you never have anyone but your mother? No father? Not even a boyfriend?’

‘No one,’ I said. ‘We were enough.’

I saw him turning the thought in his mind like a truffle on the palm. ‘That sounds good,’ he said at last. ‘Mahmed and I, we can be enough. We don’t need their approval.’

His colours told me otherwise; I read volumes of sadness there. What’s your story, Guy? I thought. Why are you someone else in Toulouse?

I reached for the vapours in my cup; Try me. Taste me. Tell me .