How about Florida, sweetheart? The Everglades? The Keys? How about Disneyland, cherie, or New York, Chicago, the Grand Canyon, Chinatown, New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains?

But with Armande there was none of my mother’s fear, none of her delicate parrying and wrangling with death, none of her mad hit-and-run flights of fantasy into the unknown. With Armande there was only the hunger, the desire, the terrible awareness of time.

I wonder what the doctor said to her this morning, and how much she really understands. I lay awake for a long time wondering, and when I finally slept, I dreamed of myself and Armande walking through Disneyland with Reynaud and Caro hand-in-hand as the Red Queen and the White Rabbit from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with big, white, cartoon gloves on their hands. Caro had a red crown on her giant head, and Armande had a stick of candyfloss in each fist.

Somewhere in the distance I could hear the sounds of New York traffic, the blaring of horns getting closer.

“Oh my, oh don’t eat that, it’s poison,” squeaked Reynaud shrilly, but Armande went on gobbling candyfloss with both hands, her face glossy and self-possessed. I tried to warn her about the cab, but she looked at me and said in my mother’s voice, “Life’s a carnival, cherie, more people die every year crossing the road, it’s a statistical fact,” and went on eating in that terrible voracious way, and Reynaud turned towards me and squeaked, in a voice made all the more menacing for its lack of resonance, “This is all your fault, you and your chocolate festival, everything was all right until you came along and now everyone’s dying DYING DYING DYING?”

I held my hands out protectively. “It isn’t me,” I whispered. “It’s you, it’s supposed to be you, you’re the Black Man, you’re – ” Then I was falling backwards through the looking glass with cards spraying out in all directions around me, nine of Swords, DEATH. Three of Swords, DEATH. The Tower, DEATH. The Chariot, DEATH.

I awoke screaming, with Anouk standing above me, her dark face blurry with sleep and anxiety.

“Maman, what is it?”

Her arms are warm around my neck. She smells of chocolate and vanilla and peaceful untroubled sleep.

“Nothing. A dream. Nothing.”

She croons to me in her small soft voice, and I have an unnerving impression of the world reversed, of myself melting into her like a nautilus into its spiral, round-around-around, of her hand cool on my forehead, her mouth against my hair.

“Out-out-out,” she murmurs automatically. “Evil spirits, get thee hence. It’s OK now, Maman. All gone.”

I don’t know where she picks these things up from. My mother used to say that, but I don’t remember ever teaching Anouk. And yet she uses it like an old familiar formula. I cling to her for a moment, paralysed by love.

“It’s going to be OK, isn’t it, Anouk?”

“Of course.” Her voice is clear and adult and self-assured. “Of course it is.” She puts her head on my shoulder and curls sleepily into the circle of my arms. “I love you too, Maman.”

Outside the dawn is a moonshimmer away on the greying horizon. I hold my daughter tightly as she drifts back again into sleep, her curls tickling my face. Is this what my mother feared? I wonder as I listen to the birds – a single craw craw at first then a full congregation of them – was this what she fled? Not her own death, but the thousands of tiny intersections of her life with others, the broken connections, the links in spite of themselves, the responsibilities? Did we spend all those years running from our loves, our friendships, the casual words uttered in passing that can alter the course of a lifetime?