I understand her situation. Why should she struggle to preserve for any longer a condition doomed to this inevitability? The thought of waste – my mother's thought, born from years of saving and uncertainty – is surely inappropriate here, I tell myself. Better the extravagant gesture, the blowout, bright lights and sudden darkness after. And yet something in me childishly wails unfair! Still hoping perhaps for the miracle. Again, my mother's thought. Armande knows better.

In the last weeks – the morphine was beginning to take over every moment and her eyes were a perpetual glaze she would lose touch with reality for hours, drifting between fantasies like a butterfly between flowers. Some were sweet, dreams of floating, of lights, out-of-the-body meetings with dead movie stars and beings from ethereal planes. Some were back-shot with paranoia. The Black Man was never far in these, lurking at street corners, sitting at the window of a diner, behind the counter of a notion's store. Sometimes he was a cab driver, his cab a black hearse like the ones you find in London, a baseball cap drawn down over his eyes. The word DODGERS was written on his cap, she said, and that was because he was on the lookout for her, for us, for all the ones who had dodged him in the past, but not for ever, she said, shaking her head wisely, never for ever. During one of these black spells she brought out a yellow plastic wallet and showed it to me. It was stuffed with newspaper-cuttings, mostly dated from the late sixties and early seventies. Most were in French, but some were in Italian, German, Greek. All dealt with kidnappings, disappearances, attacks on children.

`So easily done,' she told me, her eyes huge and vague. `Big places. So easy to lose a child. So easy to lose a child like you.’

She winked at me blearily. I patted her hand in reassurance.

`It's OK, Maman,' I said. `You were always careful. You looked out for me. I never did get lost.’

She winked again. `Oh, you were lost,' she said, grinning. `You were lo-ost.’

She stared into space for a while after that, smiling-grimacing, her hand like a bunch of dry twigs in mine. 'Looo-ssstt,' she repeated forlornly, and began to cry. I comforted her as best I could, stuffing the clippings back into the file. As I did I noticed that several dealt with the same case, the disappearance of eighteenmonth-old Sylviane Caillou in Paris. Her mother left her strapped in her car-seat for two minutes while she stopped at a chemist's, and when she returned the baby had gone.

Gone too were the changing-bag and the child's toys, a red plush elephant and a brown teddy bear.

My mother saw me looking at the article and smiled again. `I think you were two then,' she said in a sly voice. `Or nearly two. And she was much fairer than you were. Couldn't have been you, could it? And anyway, I was a better mother than she was.’

`Of course not,' I said. `You were a good mother, a wonderful mother. Don't worry. You wouldn't have done anything to put me at risk.’

Mother just rocked and smiled. `Careless,' she crooned. `Just careless. Didn't deserve a nice little girl like that, did she?’

I shook my head, feeling suddenly cold.

Childishly: `I wasn't bad, was I, Vianne?’

I shivered. The pages felt scaly beneath my fingers. `No,' I assured her. `You weren't bad.’

'I looked after you all right, didn't I? Never gave you up. Not even when that priest said – said what he said. I never.’

'No, Maman. You never did.’

The cold was paralysing now, making thought difficult. All I could think of was the name, so similar to mine, the dates… And didn't I remember that bear, that elephant, its plush worn down to the red sailcloth, carried indefatigably from Paris to Rome, Rome to Vienna? Of course it might have been one of her delusions.

There were others, like the snake under the bedclothes and the woman in the mirrors. It could have been make believe. So much of my mother's life was just that. And besides… after so long, what did it matter? At three I got up. The bed was hot and lumpy; sleep a million miles away. I lit a candle and took it into Josephine's empty bedroom. The cards were back in their old place in Mother's box, shifting eagerly beneath my grasp. The Lovers. The Tower. The Hermit. Death. Sitting cross-legged on the bare floor I shuffled them with something more than mere idleness. The Tower with its falling people, its walls crumbling, I could understand. It is my constant fear of displacement, the fear of the road, of loss. The Hermit with his hood and lantern looks very like Reynaud, his sly pale face half-hidden in shadows. Death I know very well, and I forked my fingers at the card – avert! – with the old automatic gesture. But the Lovers? I thought of Roux and Josephine so alike without knowing it, and could not suppress a prick of envy. And yet behind it I felt a sudden conviction that the card had not yet given up all its secrets. A scent of lilac spilled across the room. Maybe one of Mother's bottles had a broken seal. I felt warm even in spite of the night chill, fingers of heat reaching into the pit of my stomach. Roux? Roux? I turned the card over, in haste, with trembling fingers.

One more day. Whatever it is can wait one more day. I shuffled the cards again, but I do not have my mother's deft touch and they slipped out of my hands onto the wood. The Hermit fell face-up. He looked more like Reynaud than ever in the flickering candlelight. His face seemed to grin viciously in the shadows. I'll find a way, he promised slyly. You think you've won, but I'll still find a way. I could feel his malevolence at my fingertips.

Mother would have called it a sign.

Suddenly, on an impulse I only half understood, I picked up the Hermit and held him up to the candle flame. For a moment the flame flirted with the stiff card, then the surface began to bubble. The pallid face grimaced and blackened.

`I'll show you,' I whispered. `Try to interfere and I'll-.'

A gout of flame flared alarmingly and I dropped the card onto the boards. The flame extinguished, spraying sparks and ash onto the wood.

I felt jubilant. Who rings the changes now, Mother? And yet tonight I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I have somehow been manipulated, pushed into revealing what would have been better left alone. I did nothing, I tell myself. I intended no malice.

Still, tonight, I can't get the idea out of my mind. I feel light, insubstantial as milkweed fluff. Ready for any wind to blow away.

35

Friday March 28 Good Friday

I SHOULD BE WITH MY FLOCK, PERE. I KNOW IT. THE church is thick with incense, funereal with purple and black, not a single piece of silver, a single wreath of flowers. I should be there. Today is my greatest day, pere, the solemnity, the piety, the organ ringing like a giant underwater bell – the bells themselves silent, of course, in mourning for the crucified Christ. Myself in black and purple, my voice the middle note of the organ intoning the words. They watch me with wide, dark eyes. Even the renegades are here today, black-clad and hair greased. Their need, their expectation fills the hollow in me. For the briefest moment I really feel love, love for their sins, for their ultimate redemption, for their petty concerns, their insignificance. I know you understand, for you were their father too. In a very real sense you died for them as much as did Our Lord. To protect them from your sins and from their own. They never knew, did they, pere? Never found out from me. But when I found you with my mother in the chancery… A massive stroke, the doctor said. The shock must have been too great. You retreated. Went away into yourself though I know you can hear me, know that you see better than you ever did before. And I know that one day you will come back to us. I have fasted and prayed, pere. I have humbled myself. And yet I feel unworthy. There is still one thing I have not done.