My Chocolate Redeemer Read Online Free

told of Papa’s accident.
    â€˜Who are you and what is your function?’
    That was the question I threw at the horrid official who saw us, a sleek robot with a face that showed about as much animation as a shoehorn, with the same smooth sheen. I should add that I wore that day a little black dress and long black lycra gloves, an ensemble suited to the occasion, I thought, enlivened by a choker of amethysts and emeralds (a present from Papa), and that my appearance threw the downstairs flunkies, who took us perhaps for a visiting starlet and her chaperone, into considerable confusion. People do tend to stare at me. A lot. I think it’s the way I walk. The civil servant ignored my challenge and concentrated his attention on my mother.
    â€˜I am afraid, Madame, that I must confirm the death of Monsieur Dresseur. He died somewhere in Central Africa. There’ve been political disturbances. Details are sketchy.’
    â€˜Philippe?’ My mother shook her head as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Gone?’
    The shoehorn nodded and the light skidded off his cheap plastic forehead.
    Then, still insisting she hadn’t heard: ‘Completely?’ She opened and closed her hands as if to grab hold of something. Then again: ‘Utterly?’ as if the nothing my father had suddenly become was unthinkable. ‘There were absences. He travelled. But we met later, always. Isn’t that so, Bella? We have our own professions, you see.’ She displayed her cameras hopelessly. ‘My subjects are often old; they fade like fruit left too long in a dish.’ A look of panic-stricken cunning appeared in her eyes. ‘There will be a funeral – soon?’
    But he was too smart for this. ‘Utterly,’ he repeated.
    â€˜Bella don’t cry,’ my mother said. ‘There must be something still.’
    â€˜You will be informed if anything comes to light,’ said the plastic man. ‘He was attacked, we understand, somewhere in the bush. There were dissidents in the area. Soldiers. The new regime had severed relations with France. Communication is difficult. We will know more in a week or so. Perhaps.’
    â€˜I might be in Chicago,’ said my mother vaguely, ‘or L.A.’
    That was when I put my question again. ‘Are you a wave or a particle?’ It derived, as I’m sure you know, from quantum theory and the study of the atom. I had stolen it from Uncle Claude who used to pursue me with the question when he still thought there was a chance of my salvation for science. The particles that make up the atom may be thought of as two things at once, points or waves. An atom is composed of a nucleus orbited by electrons. When studied at rest an electron, say, can be thought of as a round little globe, like a ball-bearing or a billiard ball. But when it’s moving we must think of it as a wave, as a little packet of energy, as a field of force smeared around the nucleus. Now that was the purloined thought behind the question I put to the shoehorn. Was he a wave or a point?
    â€˜I am a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Mademoiselle,’ was his wet and boring answer.
    It didn’t much matter. I had already marked him down for a particle. He could only be considered a wave if you thought of him as part of the onrushing momentum carrying Mama and I towards our destiny.
    â€˜Then speak to us,’ I demanded.
    But the interview was over, though I noticed that he looked at my amethyst and emerald choker with little piggy eyes.
    My mother took the news with terrible composure. She was, at the time, about to fly out on a new project in which she would be photographing film stars for an American magazine and her schedule was hectic. Nonetheless she found time to wind up my father’s estate, sell off our apartment in Paris, remove me from the local school and take me with her to England where I was enrolled in the North London Academy for Girls