I feel a desperate urge to run to meet him, and an equally desperate longing to run far away in the opposite direction. I do not move. I am trembling a little, my stomach tightening with a dizziness I never felt when I walked the high rope.
Slowly, almost casually, the masked figure makes his way toward me. Halfway across the sward he takes off his doublet and throws it across his shoulder. The sun catches a mark, high up on his left arm, which shines silvery in the light. Then he puts out his hand, a tiny smile on his lips, in a gesture both tender and mocking.
From my window it almost looks like an invitation to dance.
About the Author
JOANNE HARRIS is the author of Chocolat, which was short-listed for the prestigious Whitbread Award. Joanne’s latest work is Jigs & Reels-her first ever collection of short stories. Her other critically acclaimed works include the novels Holy Fools, Coastliners, Five Quarters of the Orange, and Blackberry Wine, as well as My French Kitchen, a collection of her family recipes and reminiscences. She studied modern and medieval languages at Saint Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and taught French for twelve years at a boys’ grammar school. The daughter of a French mother and an English father, she lives in her native Yorkshire with her husband and their daughter.
