Page 57 of The Strawberry Thief
Pilou made a face. ‘Don’t do that, Rosette. I’m serious.We’reserious.’
I shrugged.What does that even mean?
‘It means I grew up. It means that I might want something more than this village for the rest of my life. Her parents have invited me to their place in New York.New York, Rosette! In my whole life I’ve never even been to Marseille. My mother’s always saying how she wanted to see the world. But she never did. She just stayed here. To run her stupid littlecafé.’
I wanted to say:But there’s Lansquenet. There’s a whole world of things to discover right here. You haven’t even seen my wood. There are little anemones growing under the oak trees. There are blackbirds, and in a month the floor will be thick with wild strawberries. They used to be cultivated, but mostly they’ve gone wild. That’s fine, though. When they’re wild, strawberries are sweeter. You could help me pick them some day. We could make wild strawberry jam. You could bring Vlad. He’d like that. Remember in the old days? When you and I and Vlad would play at building dams by the river? Those were good days. Those were the very best days. You can’t believe that growing up, and seeing New York, and having a girlfriend, could ever compete with the days we used to have—’
But all I said, in my shadow-voice, was: ‘Vlad,’ and it sounded strange and sad.
Pilou sighed. ‘Oh, Rosette,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll never understand. We’ll always be friends, but Isabelle—’ His eyes light up when he speaks her name. He lowered his voice and looked around, but the bus had gone, and the other kids had all gone home. The street was bare. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he said. ‘We’re in love. We even got matching tattoos.’
I looked up.You did?
He grinned at me. ‘My mother will never notice,’ he said. Butlook—’
And he opened his fingers and showed me, in the space between his index and middle fingers, a tiny, five-petaled flower, pale blue, with a speck of sun at its heart—
‘It’s a forget-me-not,’ he said. ‘She’s got one too, in the same place. She hides hers under a friendship ring. That’s why we got the tattoos. It means we’re going to get married some day.’
I made a raucous jackdaw sound. But I didn’t feel like laughing at all. Pilou, married? Pilou, gone away to some place like New York or Marseille?
But you’re only sixteen, I said.
He shrugged. ‘So what? My mother was married at eighteen.’
Yes, and look at what happened to her.
I don’t think he understood what I’d said. Instead he looked at me in that way that somehow reminds me of Madame Clairmont – as if he wasn’t nearly my age, but older, so much older.
I said:Is that why you’re avoiding me? Because of Isabelle?
He shrugged. ‘Rosette, I have to go,’ he said. ‘Isabelle’s a bit jealous of you. She knows we’re only friends, but she kind of wishes she and I had grown up together, like we did.’
Except I never grew up, I said, and made Bam turn a somersault. But either Pilou didn’t see, or he was too busy thinking of her.
‘Boys are so stupid,’ I told him, using my shadow-voice this time, but he was already starting to run, running after Isabelle like a stupid, eager dog trying to catch up with a deer. It would have made a good drawing, I thought. But somehow I didn’t want to draw. Instead I thought of Vlad, and felt a kind of little hole in my heart, as if something had punctured there, and air was suddenly rushing through.
‘Boys are so stupid,’ I said again, even though there was no-one to hear, and I felt the wind stir, just like a dog sitting up to attention, and knew that I could call it, perhaps even make it take Isabelle—
But that wouldn’t change anything. Pilou said it himself. He grew up. If not Isabelle, then someone else. Some other girl. People move on. They make other friends. They grow. They change. They go away.
But not me, I thought. I don’t change. I’m not like all the others. I’m the Snow Child, who isn’t allowed to play with her friends in the sun. Because if I do, then one day they’ll find my clothes abandoned on the ground, and nothing left of me at all, except for a puddle of water …
10
Thursday, March 30
I waited until dark,mon père. I thought it might give me a better chance of finding the Dubois woman alone. Not that she has opening hours, so even then I could not be sure if she would have a customer. As it happened, she did not: the door was ajar, and I came in, having knocked and received no reply.
The tattoo parlour was empty. A faint thread of incense in the air; a scent of frangipani. I personally do not enjoy the scent of incense. Even church incense seems too rich, too potent to be holy. When I was a boy, I would admire the great silver censer in the church, and breathe in the smoke, and imagine myself swinging it over the heads of the people. I liked the frankincense in those days: it made my head spin rather pleasantly. Later, I realized that I had been slightly intoxicated. Power intoxicates, of course.Youknow that already.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Madame Dubois?’
I sensed a movement beside me. Turning, I thought I saw Roux, reflected in the opposite wall. That was a surprise – I’d thought the tattoo shop empty, and besides, I’d heard he was leaving. And yet here he was, watching me from beneath his curtain of hair. I blinked, and there was no-one. More of Morgane’s illusions. I know them now, I told myself. They have no power over me. Turning back, I saw that the mirror was now nothing more than birds and leaves, and myself, like a child in a forest, and the slowly rotating fan of the smoke.
‘Madame Dubois?’ I was aware that my voice was sharper than I’d intended. But seeing Roux in the mirror like that had made me lose my composure. I sounded rattled, lost to myself, and just at that moment Morgane came in from the room at the back of the shop, looking cool and elegant in a long dress of heavy dark silk, holding a tumbler in one hand.
‘It’sMademoiselleDubois,’ she said. ‘But maybe you should call me Morgane.’
