Chocolat

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Heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped to make this book possible: to my family for support, childminding and somewhat baffled encouragement; to Kevin for handling all the tedious paperwork; to Anouchka for the loan of Pantoufle. Thanks also to my indomitable agent Serafina Clarke and editor Francesca Liversidge, to Jennifer Luithlen and Lora Fountain, plus everyone at Doubleday who helped to make me so welcome. Finally, special thanks to fellow author Christopher Fowler for turning on the lights.

February 11 Shrove Tuesday

WE CAME ON THE WIND OF THE CARNIVAL. A WARM WIND for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hotplate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds which line the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crepe-covered char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes wide, a yellow balloon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from between a shopping-basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a procession of,two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Tetes with their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes with batons spinning and sparkling. But at six the world retains a special lustre. A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt and crepe and scenes from fairy tales.

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