Free The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris

longs, as he says, for a woman’s touch.
    A woman’s touch. Such an old-fashioned phrase. But then, Thierry is the old-fashioned type. In spite of his love of gadgetry, his mobile phone and his surround-sound hi-fi, he remains loyal to old ideals; to a simpler time.
    Simple. That’s it. Life with Thierry would be very simple. There would always be money for necessary things. The rent for the chocolaterie would always be paid. Anouk and Rosette would be cared for and safe. And if he loves them – and me – isn’t that enough?
    Is it, Vianne? That’s my mother’s voice – sounding very like Roux these days. I remember a time when you wanted more .
    As you did, Mother? I told her silently. Dragging your child from place to place, always, for ever on the run. Living – just – from hand to mouth, stealing, lying, conjuring; six weeks, three weeks, four days in a place and then move on; no home, no school, peddling dreams, shuffling cards to map our journeys, wearing seam-stretched hand-me-downs, like tailors too busy to mend our own clothes.
    At least we knew what we were, Vianne.
    It was a cheap comeback, and one I would have expected from her. Besides, I know what I am. Don’t I?
    We ordered noodles for Rosette and plat du jour for the rest of us. It was far from crowded, even for a weekday; but the air was stale with beer and Gitanes. Laurent Pinson is his own best customer; but for that, I really think he would have closed down years ago. Jowly, unshaven and bad-tempered, he views his customers as intruders on his free time, and makes no secret of his contempt for everyone but a handful of regulars who are also his friends.
    He tolerates Thierry, who plays the brash Parisian for the occasion, erupting into the café with a ‘ Hé, Laurent, ça va, mon pote! ’ and the slap of a big banknote on the bar. Laurent knows him for a property man – has enquired about the price his own café might fetch, rebuilt and refurbished – and now calls him M’sieur Thierry and treats him with a deference that might be respect, or perhaps the hope of a deal to come.
    I noticed he was looking more presentable today – shiny-suited and smelling of cologne, shirt collar buttoned over a tie that had first seen the light of day sometime in the late seventies. Thierry’s influence, I thought; though later I came to change my mind.
    I left them to it and sat down, ordered coffee for myself and Coke for Anouk. Once we would have had hot chocolate, with cream and marshmallows and a tiny spoon with which to scoop it – but now it’s always Coke for Anouk. She doesn’t drink hot chocolate nowadays – some diet thing, I thought at first – and it feels so absurd to be hurt by that, like the first time she refused her bedtime story. Still such a sunny little girl; and yet increasingly I sense these shadowsin her, these places to which I am not invited. I know them well – I was the same – and isn’t a part of my fear just that: the knowledge that, at her age, I too wanted to run, to escape my mother in as many ways as I possibly could?
    The waitress was new and looked vaguely familiar. Long legs, pencil skirt, hair tied up in a ponytail – I finally recognized her by her shoes.
    ‘It’s Zoë, isn’t it?’ I said.
    ‘Zozie.’ She grinned. ‘Some place, eh?’ She made a comic little gesture, as if ushering us in. ‘Still –’ she lowered her voice to a whisper – ‘I think the landlord’s sweet on me.’
    Thierry laughed out loud at that, and Anouk gave her sideways smile.
    ‘It’s only a temporary job,’ Zozie said. ‘Until I come up with something better.’
    The plat du jour was choucroute garnie – a dish I associate somehow with our time in Berlin. Surprisingly good for Le P’tit Pinson, which fact I attributed to Zozie and not to some renewed culinary zeal in Laurent.
    ‘With Christmas coming up, won’t you need some help in the shop?’ said Zozie, transferring sausages from the grill. ‘If so, then