"Did I ever tell you about the time Albane was almost kidnapped?" said my friend Élisabeth.
I laughed. The word reminded me of the time one of my kids invited a friend from California to visit us in Paris. The girl was 16, but her parents would not allow her to come because they had just seen Taken and were actually worried she might be abducted and sold into white slavery.
"But no, I'm serious. Albane was almost kidnapped as a child," Élisabeth said. And she told me that one winter day, she and her mother had taken the little girl to a Paris department store, dressed in a pretty new red coat. They were absorbed in trying on hats when they realized Albane had wandered off. More and more worried, they rushed all over the ground floor of the store, calling her name, but didn't find her. Élisabeth finally ran to the entrance where they had come in and asked the security guard if he had seen a little girl in a red coat.
"Oui, she just left with her grandmother," the guard said, pointing. And two hundred yards up the avenue, almost hidden by crowds of shoppers, Élisabeth saw little Albane trotting hand-in-hand with a unknown woman in her fifties. As they watched, the two turned the corner and disappeared.
"I screamed," Élisabeth said, and told the guard that the woman had stolen her child. The two of them ran after the woman, and the guard caught up and snatched the child into his arms, running back to give her frantic mother.
"What happened to the woman?"
"She vanished," said Élisabeth. "The security guard wasn't watching, and all I cared about at that moment was that I had my daughter. But ever since, I have had nightmares about those few seconds when I saw Albane disappear around the corner. Suppose she hadn't been wearing that red coat! Or that they had been a few steps further away, around the corner!"
