Page 73 of Vianne

Of course, it means nothing. A man in black, trying to see through the window.

There is no reason to believe in anything more sinister.

People are curious in Le Panier; a new shop is always intriguing.

And Allée du Pieu has been transformed since I first arrived here.

Gone are the piles of litter, the bins, the drums of used cooking oil to be collected.

Gone too are the rats and mice – since Pomponette’s arrival, they have vacated the alleyway.

The boarded-up windows have been concealed behind some wooden panels, which can be painted with Christmas designs, or hung with Chinese lanterns.

The crew at Happy Noodles are in some part to thank for this – it was Madame Li’s idea to put up the wooden panels – and the takeaway now has a new neon sign, which, once the place is open again, will illuminate the street.

And there is increasing interest about the shop from the family.

Grandmother Li is openly so; Madame Li and her daughters are more discreet.

But this morning, curiosity won out over discretion, and I opened up to find the Li girls peering in through the cracks in the newspaper.

They both jumped back when I appeared, but I gave them a reassuring smile.

‘There’s nothing much in there for now,’ I said. ‘But I’ll be dressing the window on Friday night. Would you like to help me?’

The two girls looked at each other. I could see caution there, and desire. All girls like chocolate, of course, and yet they are still wary.

‘Help you?’

‘You could be my testers.’ Another pause, during which I see their colours reflected in their eyes. ‘But first, I need to know your names,’ I said. ‘How else can I thank you?’

A fraction’s hesitation. Names are things of power.

‘Francoise,’ says the eldest. ‘Karine,’ says the younger.

Of course, these are not their Chinese names.

These have been adopted in order to fit in more readily at school, and in the neighbourhood.

True names are for family, kept secret from strangers.

‘I’m happy to meet you, Francoise, Karine. Come to the front door on Friday, at five. I’ll look forward to seeing you.’

No, it means nothing. A man in black. Simply my mother’s fears given shape at this, my final coming of age, this claiming of my power. She cannot change me now; cannot bind me to her path. I have my own path now; I have my own name. Who I was – who I may have been – is part of a different story.

In those final weeks in New York, I asked her about my father.

Before that, she had always avoided talking about him, or had told me extravagant stories – at times he had been a pirate, an astronaut, an explorer.

Sometimes he had black hair, sometimes he was bearded; sometimes he was mixed-race; sometimes fair and clean-shaven.

And as I grew, I secretly wondered if he was the man she fled – the Man in Black of her stories, with his eyes that saw through walls, and his voice that summoned the wind.

He’s here. I know. I can feel him , she would say in her delirium. He’ll find us, ’Viane, he’ll follow us all the way across the world.

‘But what does he want?’ I would ask her, hoping she would go to sleep; hoping the wind would stop blowing; that the luck would finally turn.

My mother would laugh. ‘What does he want? What do any of them want? They think I’m crazy. They think I can’t be trusted to look after a child. They want to lock me away, to take you and make you forget me. You won’t go with them, will you, ’Viane? You won’t let them put me away?’

‘Of course not. Of course not. Please, Maman. Close your eyes and try to rest.’

But long after that, when she was asleep, my mind was still racing. Could my mother have suffered from some kind of mental illness? Was that why we ran away – because she was afraid I might be taken away from her? Had she spent my childhood hiding from my father?

I looked for answers among her things. I thought I knew everything she had.

But among her papers, her passport, her few photographs, I found some newspaper clippings – Maman, who never kept anything – eighteen-year-old clippings from Le Parisien , Le Figaro , Ouest-France , even Le Monde , recounting the disappearance of a child, Sylviane Caillou, stolen from her mother’s car while the woman stopped by the chemist’s.

The papers were faded and brown as dead leaves.

The story was lacking in detail, and yet I remembered parts of it: the toys that were taken along with the child – a red plush elephant, a bear, a pink plush rabbit – along with the little girl’s changing-bag.

Why had she kept those clippings? I thought.

How could that little girl with my name be more than just a coincidence?

It explains so much. My mother’s fear. Her perpetual dread of losing me.

Her lifelong flight from the Man in Black.

That burning need to go unseen. And the rabbit.

Always the rabbit. Your invisible friend , she used to say.

But Molfetta was real ; I remembered her; the scrap of ribbon around her neck; the silky feel of her well-worn fur; the bud of silk on the tip of her nose.

And somehow – always – the memory was linked to that night in the confessional; to the Virgin standing over us with her baby in her arms, and the music sweeping over the crowd, and the Man in White with his crucifix, and the scent of polish and incense-smoke and the voice of my mother calling me, and my own voice rising furiously:

You’re not my mother! Get away! You’re not my real mother!

When she was herself again, I tried to ask the question.

But she refused to answer, or to speak of Sylviane Caillou, or that bundle of newspaper clippings, or the fact that I still remembered the toys in those newspaper articles.

We choose our family , she said. We choose our fellow-travellers.

And later, when the pain was worse, and the morphine was taking hold, she said; Don’t worry.

I fixed it, Viannou. I fixed it, for a pretty.

I won’t lose you. You’ll lose me. That’s how it always works for our kind. Everything must be paid for.

She died three months later, not of cancer after all, but in a hit-and-run accident.

At the time, I wondered if this was her way of avoiding that conversation: the one in which we could have discussed that little girl in Paris, and the woman who stole her.

But it was just an accident; a busy road in Chinatown; a blare of horns; a flag of a cry unfurled against the summer air.

We never got to see Florida. But she never lost me.

Perhaps that was what she meant, after all; payment, for a pretty.

After that, there was no point in asking questions any more.

Whatever her reasons, whatever her sins, there was no doubt she loved me.

Love goes deeper than the bonds of blood, or genes, or family.

And she was my mother. I loved her. Even knowing what I know; that somewhere, in another life, I had another mother.

But to claim this other life, I would have had to deny Maman.

To deny who I have become. To unravel the threads of my past; to go back to the beginning.

How can I do that? How can I erase myself for the sake of a woman I don’t even know?

No, this is my life now. This is my path.

I can only move forward. Whoever I was – who I might have been – that story died with my mother.

I am an adult. I choose my path. And even if they found me now, what could they expect from me?