heart all over again. He sounds almost as unsuitable as Ernst, this good-looking Lothario. He sounds as if he used women, even if it was for the sake of the underground network that he ran.
I have a horrible feeling that history is going to repeat itself and Claire is never going to learn any lessons from her mistakes.
But then, do any of us, ever?
Some of the rooms in the Palais Galliera are closed today, as they are changing the exhibitions. Jeanne Lanvin’s creations – and that Lanvin-blue dress with the silver beads – are being returned to the archives in the basement of the museum where they will be carefully preserved until the next time they are brought out. I sit outside, on one of the benches that circle the building, among the statues that are dotted through the palace grounds, writing down the latest instalment of Claire’s story.
My phone buzzes and I smile when I see Thierry’s name on the screen. And then I smile even more broadly when he asks if I’d like to meet up for dinner tonight, at a little bistro he knows of that serves the best moules-frites in Paris.
1942
They’d been travelling for almost two days now and Claire hadn’t been able to relax her guard for a moment, despite everything having gone smoothly so far. They’d got out of Paris safely and spent the night in the hotel in Chartres exactly as planned, travelling on to Nantes the following day. Now on the final leg of the journey, Claire was shocked to see the devastation the war had inflicted on Saint-Nazaire. She remembered the city from her youth as a place filled with hope and promise, the gateway to a new life away from Port Meilhon. But now it resembled a town that had forgotten what hope looked like. Buildings were pitted and pock-marked with machine-gun fire, and the once-proud shipyards were sealed off and deserted. The dry dock, which had been capable of accommodating the German navy’s biggest warships, had been blown up in a recent raid by British commandoes.
She glimpsed these fragmented scenes as she and Fréd rattled along the pot-holed roads in the back of a van which had been taking a delivery of fish to a food depot on the outskirts of the city. Although empty, the van still smelt strongly of its previous cargo. Again and again, she swallowed the acid bile that rose in her throat as a result of the overpowering smell, combined with the stomach-churning jouncing of the van along the pocked and broken roads. The sight of the bombed-out buildings along the way brought back vivid memories of the night in Billancourt when she’d so narrowly escaped death. An image of Christiane’s face seemed to float against the backdrop of the ruined landscape, and the scent of dust and smoke mingled with the odour of fish oil in her nostrils. She hoped the persistent twitch at the corner of one of her eyes didn’t give away how panicked she was beginning to feel.
As if physically holding herself together, she kept her arms folded, letting her fingertips surreptitiously trace the reassuring outline of the package Monsieur Leroux had given her, which she’d sewn into the lining of her coat for safekeeping.
Fréd was a largely silent travelling companion, lost in his own thoughts, although his solid presence was a reassuring one. He’d let her do the talking when they’d come upon the fish van that morning. When Claire had mentioned her father’s name, the driver’s weather-beaten face had creased into a grin of recognition and he’d readily agreed to give them a lift all the way to Port Meilhon, even though it would take him a little way past his own home in Concarneau.
At last he dropped them off, with another grin and a wave, at the top of the narrow, cobbled lane that led down to the tiny harbour. Claire stood for a moment, thankful to be still again after the hours of lurching in the back of the van. She took deep breaths of the sea air, relieved that the horrible feeling of nausea was passing. It was reassuring to be in familiar surroundings. The fishing village smelt as it always had done, of salt and seaweed and the damp lengths of rope which tethered the little fleet of boats to their moorings along the quayside. Seabirds shrieked at one another overhead, keeping a beady eye out for easy pickings whenever a boat came in.