I don't own Chocolat, the book or the film.


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In the Streets of Paris

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There was an old saying in Lansquenet-sous-Tannes that the day you find a feather in your path, you will meet someone special.

Someone really special. One of those fulcrum people that can change your life completely. The type of people that can change your life until you can't remember the past. They say that the feather is a sign from your guardian angel. A type of early-warning system, you could say. It's to remind you that there is always someone looking for you.

In Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, the children were taught this in the Sunday school. An old martinet, Sister Amelie of the Poor Clares, would travel down from the convent several miles away every Sunday afternoon in a rusty old Renault and instruct them in the lore of the catechism for an hour. And not just the ritual and pomp of the High Mass but the simpler ceremonies and traditions. The traditions that came from the people rather than from Rome. Like building a May shrine for the Virgin or knowing which holy wells can cure warts.

But Anouk, being the daughter of Vianne Rocher, had never attended this institution. So when she woke before dawn one Tuesday morning with a white feather resting on her pillow, she thought nothing of it.

Not then.


"Anouk, don't you see? By wearing these… these skirt contraptions you're unconsciously submitting to a patriarchal world. It's like you're saying to every available man, 'Oh, come on, and watch my good child-bearing hips!'"

"Bernadette, it's just a skirt. It's a piece of cloth, wrapped around my waist. It keeps me warm. It stops me getting arrested by the gendarmes for public indecency. What," Anouk rubbed a particularly stubborn cigar burn – Flavian again – with the vinegar soaked cloth. "What's… so terrible… about… that?"

"It's a symbol of subjugation!"

"It's a skirt!"

"It's not even a very short skirt either." Amabel sipped her chocolat chaud slowly, savouring each drop. Bernadette gave her an aggravated look.

"Thank you, Amabel. A useful piece of observation, I must say." The sarcasm was as thick as cream.

Amabel blew her accusation away with a wave of her fingers. "Poof! I don't care." She declared. "It is a woman's duty to be beautiful. You will never convince me that is not so."

Bernadette gritted her teeth. Beseechingly, she turned back to Anouk. "Look," She said, loosening her pinstriped tie. "If we ever…"

"We?" Amabel choked in disgust. "We? There is no we. I don't believe in all this ridiculous American falminist..."

"It's feminist, you illiterate… Mordieu! I swear, if it were up to you, we'd still be in the dark ages. Fainting in corsets!" Bernadette snarled, banging the table. The tiny cups rocked. Anouk groaned and moved them to the other side of the counter.

Amabel's sleepy hazel eyes snapped into life. "At least corsets would be more becoming than suits. You look like a man!"

"That's the bloody point!" Gritting her teeth, Bernadette spun off the stool. She stomped over to the first sofa. Her battered leather briefcase was resting there, beside an exhausted Durant. With a bark of annoyance, she ordered him to move. He looked about to refuse but then caught the militant glint in her stormy grey eyes. A similar glint had glittered in the eyes of the peasant women as they had knitted beside the guillotines of the Revolution. He hurried to his feet, mumbling curses and moans of pain. With a sharp recommendation not to drink so much absinthe if he didn't want to get hung-over, Bernadette lugged the old briefcase back to the counter. "Here. You'll see." She promised, rifling through the mess of papers. "I'll show you what happens when women let men make all the choices. I'll show you…"

Amabel peeped behind incredulous fingers. She had covered her face with her hands the moment Bernadette had produced the case. She disliked any reminder of the business world. "Anouk, stop her!" She cried pathetically. "I'm going to be sick if she produces anymore poetry!"

Anouk laughed at the red-head's anguished cry. Reaching out, she placed a hand on Bernadette's shoulder. "Bernadette, relax. We believe you. Have some more chocolate. Have a rose d'or."

Bernadette jerked her hand off. "No!" She snapped. Anouk rolled her eyes. "Tradition… Womanliness… You'll see! It's a cage! Here!"

The two women peered down at the offending article slammed down on the counter.

"'Paris-Flash'?"

"Of course!"She pointed at the magazine with the same hatred as a Puritan Elder might betray during the Salem Witch Trials."Open it! To page seven!"

Anouk exhaled in exasperation. Flicking through the pages, she paused at page six. A furious mewl from her friend urged her on.

Her stomach plummeted. Far-too familiar blue eyes gazed out at her from the shiny paper pages. For a moment she was back on the promenade at Gruissan, at that ridiculous little kiosk and Maurice was waiting behind her, his warm comfortable bulk a complete contrast to the cool elegance in the pages between her hands… But Maurice was in her past now and it still hurt to think of him and what might have been: marriage, a home, children, comfort…

Distantly, she heard Bernadette's triumphant crow. "You see? That's what's wrong with our society today. They promote women as useless ornaments, only to be painted and made love to. We are demoted from the sense of being useful! This Clairmont guy…"

Amabel was off on a completely different opinion. "Is that a genuine Dior? Sacré diables, if that's the opposite of feminism, I'm all for it!"

"Oh for the love of… You'll see, next week they'll be married in a wide media zoo and divorced in six months."

"Divorced? In this country? Be serious Bernie."

"It's Bernadette." came the outraged hiss. Amabel waved her off.

"I think it's romantic. I wouldn't mind be proposed to by a man who could keep me in Dior gowns. What about you Anouk? Anouk?"

Anouk shook herself. She had been remembering and remembering was bad. She looked at her friends. Something in her dark brown eyes disconcerted them. Bernadette paused and coughed. "Anouk?" She tried again.

Anouk paused. Then she knew her answer. She shrugged carelessly. "I never cared for Dior. It doesn't change often enough for me."

Bernadette blinked. She hadn't been expecting that answer. Since she did not know the difference between rags from a junk-shop and silks from a couture house, the significance of that metaphor was lost on her. Not so with Amabel, who covered her mouth once more, dissolving into delicious giggles. Her laughter caught on with Anouk. Slowly a grin tickled its way across her wide lips, softening the strong line of her jaw. With an extravagant toss, she threw the cloth in her hand away. It flew up and up, then hooked onto the edge of the dresser that dominated the back of the counter. With the air of someone shaking off old dust, she dragged her long loose brown hair back from her face. "I'll never marry." She said firmly. Her friends didn't realise how truthfully she was speaking.

"Neither will I." Bernadette agreed stoutly. "I have far more important things to be doing." With a venomous look at Amabel, who was watching them both from underneath veiled incredulous eyes, she clicked the briefcase shut. "Like actually attending my lectures." She marched out of the shop. The door slammed behind her.

Pulling out a compact mirror, Amabel checked her new lipstick. "Well, I think you're both crazy." She said conversationally, as if Bernadette had been little more than a gust of wind. "Especially you Anouk. Isn't' chocolate the food of love?"

"I thought it was music."

"Only according to the Italians. We are French, you and I. We know better."

Steeling herself from reading over yet another article about Luc Clairmont, Anouk stuffed the magazine into a drawer in the dresser. "I have no time for romance." She declared simply. Without glancing back, she moved around her little café, clearing the tables of paper plates and empty cups. The café was quiet now, empty after the morning rush. Most of the students were in lectures and classes. Monsieur Giscard was not due in until eleven. Their little street was as empty as her café. Few tourists tended to come down here. Even at the height of the summer season, only one or two braved the labyrinth of streets around France's most famous university.

Amabel finished touching up her make-up. Pressing a tissue to her newly rouged lips, she decided to offer her friend a life-line. "I know some very nice young men…"She coaxed, her voice muffled by the tissue.

Inwardly, Anouk marvelled at how her single state seemed to inspire would-be matchmakers to their greatest efforts. If she had a sou for every time she heard that line… "No Amabel."

"I don't know why you're being so mean." She flounced her red curls petulantly. "You're really quite pretty Anouk." A sly look came into her eyes. "I heard Henri compare to you to a Dark Aphrodite."

"Henri is an art student. And, what is worse, he's a melodramatic one."

The compact shut with an irritated snap. "You are acting like a child!"

This was ridiculous coming from a girl who could barely make toast without burning it. Anouk ignored the murmur of voices outside her window and sighed. "You have no right to lecture me about love when you cannot keep the same boyfriend for more than a week!"She pointed out, bending down on her hands and knees to gather up the bundle of philosophy notes that had been left beneath her sofa. Marxism again. It seemed to be the philosophy of choice among her customers.

Her brown hair fell into her face, obscuring her vision. She shoved it back from her face irritably. For a moment, she wished for a hair-tie. She had slept late this morning and had no time to tame the brown strands in their usual plait. Generally leaving her hair loose wasn't so bad. She had some vanity after all and enjoyed seeing it frame her face like a brown velvet curtain. But it was next to useless when she needed to do some work.

Amabel's voice floated over to her. "At least wear some make-up, Anouk. You look like a hag in that drab brown. And why don't get your hair permed? It would look so much nicer than in a bird's nest all the time."

Anouk gritted her teeth. Her temper had calmed over the years she had spent wandering around France. She had learned to be patient and quiet and know when to bite her lip and say nothing. Again, she reminded herself that Amabel had always been like this. Would always be like this. She was simply too lazy to bother being tactful. Anouk reminded herself that she was above unknowing insults. "I haven't the time."

"You never leave the café, you never go dancing…" Anouk fixed her eyes upon the angels painted on the ceiling and for the first time in her life prayed for patience to accept her annoying friend.

"Amabel, I don't care. I'm not really fond of dancing."That was a lie of course. She loved to dance, almost as much as she had learned to love the ritual of making chocolate. But since Maurice, she simply hadn't bothered. It seemed too much like she was setting down roots in a place.

Amabel brushed it aside. "Don't be silly. I know a great discotheque down on the Rue des Veuves. The bouncers will let us in…"

Anouk shot up. "Am-" Her head cracked off the top of one of her tables. She yelped in pain. The pain broke her temper. "I am not going to the discotheque!" She yelled, on her hands and knees under the table.

The door to the café opened.

Someone coughed. It was a rich man's cough, the type that Anouk recognised from her time in Carcassonne. Two leather shoes, polished until they were as brown as autumn chestnuts appeared in her line of vision.

Judging by the silence, Amabel seemed lost for words.

The shoes shifted. "Are you the owner of this shop?" The voice asked politely. It was a man. He did not sound Parisian. At least not completely. There were a medley of different inflections in his voice, few of which Anouk recognised. He rolled his rrr's like a man from her home region in the north, but there was a liquid quality about his vowels that sounded faintly Italian.

"I…" Amabel sounded like a drowning fish. "You, you… You're…"

Anouk climbed to her feet before the man thought her café was being run by a lunatic. "No, M'sieur." She said smoothly, brushing down the dust from her skirt. "I am the proprietor." She couldn't tell why she was suddenly being so formal. This man seemed to put her on her guard and he hadn't even turned around.

He was tall, she saw, examining him quickly. Dark blond hair was cut neatly, tighter than most of the male students wore it. His skin was tanned but in such a way that she thought he had been pale originally. He wore camel coloured culottes and a blue shirt, light blue, like the sky. There was a smear of red paint along one sleeve.

He turned around.

Anouk knew why Amabel had been speechless. For a moment, she couldn't believe it herself. She just stood there, staring. Then she gathered herself up. Inhaling deeply, she lifted her chin and met his gaze head-on.

"Luc Clairmont."

The blue eyes gleamed. "Anouk Rocher. It's been a long time."


Eeep! I should be doing my Special Topic right now for History, I'm exhausted after the stress of doing Maths (hate, hate, hate!) and Biology. I think my hand is cramping and tomorrow I have to absorb the recent history of Northern Ireland and twelve poems in time for a History test where I have to write a succinct, intelligent essay (5 pages long) in 42.5 minutes and for an English test where yes! There is alos two five page essays!

Okay enough whinging. But please review! It makes the cramps in my hand go away. :)

AmicableAlien