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‘Fine,’ he called. ‘I’m sorry, I turned to get the pan and my elbow knocked it over.’
They both winced at the mess. The poster was lying face down in a pool of glass.
Antoine set about picking up the pieces of glass, cupping them into his hand, then going to fetch the small broom and pan that always hung on the back of the kitchen door.
As he swept around it, Sabine lifted up the frame, noticing that the brown paper on the back was beginning to tear. It also looked oddly bulky, as if something had shifted in the fall. She felt the back and frowned. ‘Weird. There’s something here.’
Antoine was busy sweeping and didn’t look up.
She sat on her haunches, and felt along the back. It felt like something had been placed beneath the paper. Curious. She opened up the slight tear in the paper more.
‘What the—’ she said.
‘What?’ asked Antoine, looking up.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but it’s something. She tore a strip and opened the paper wider. Inside she could make out something hard, which she prised out. To her surprise, it was a thick brown envelope. It fell onto the ground with an audible clunk.
‘What the hell is that?’ she whispered.
‘Holy crap,’ breathed Antoine.
They stared at it for a long time.
‘Are you going to open it?’
She bit her lip. Yes, was, of course, the answer, but she hesitated. ‘I just – if it came out of that poster – from that place,’ she breathed, meaning the restaurant, ‘it’s probably nothing good.’
‘You don’t know that.’
She nodded. The only way to know was to open it. She tore the top of the envelope off, and then jiggled the contents out onto the floor. Several things began to fall out. She picked up the first one. It was a small notebook, bound in red and white. Then she opened it and blinked in surprise.
‘It’s a recipe book,’ she breathed.
‘What? Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said, flicking through. The first page had a small inscription. ‘For Ma Petite, all my love, Grand-mère.’
As she flipped through the pages, the handwriting, which looked quite childish and round at first, began to change, becoming elegant as the pages and perhaps the writer herself, grew.
Sabine blinked as she looked at it. ‘This looks like it was from when she was a little girl.’
Antoine frowned. ‘So it was true, then – that part about Marianne learning to cook from her grandmother?’ he asked.
‘It must have been,’ she said in awe.
The other item was something that caused her to gasp.
‘Is that – a passport?’
It was.
‘What?’ breathed Antoine.
She opened it up to the identity page then frowned.
It was Marianne. Or at least who she assumed it had to be, as Monsieur Géroux was right, she looked a lot like Sabine.
Except that it wasn’t Marianne at all.
