up with. Thanks for the locket. See you tomorrow.’
Mireille watched sadly as her friend swept out of the apartment and off down the stairs. And then, after a few minutes, she pulled on her own coat and slipped out, silent as a shadow, to be swallowed up by the crowds in the busy streets below.
At the entrance to the nightclub, Claire left her coat at the hat-check desk even though it meant she would have to put a few sous in the plate on the counter for the sour-faced woman who had given the threadbare garment a disdainful shake as she’d taken it away to hang it on the rail.
My coat may be shabby, mademoiselle, Claire thought as she turned towards the powder room, but at least I’m not stuck behind the counter on New Year’s Eve with a scowl on my face. She took a cheap gilt compact from her evening bag and leaned towards the mirror as she blotted the shine from her nose and cheeks. The women alongside her glanced enviously at the drape of the midnight blue dress, which Claire had painstakingly made from remnants of crêpe de Chine left over from one of Monsieur Delavigne’s designs. It had taken her ages to piece the lengths together and she’d spent long evenings trying to get the seams to lie absolutely flat where she’d had to sew the offcuts side by side, so that the joins would be virtually invisible. She’d stitched a scattering of silver beads along the neckline to distract the eye from the patchwork nature of the gown, and draped the fabric on the bias so that it flowed over her slim hips. Her evening bag was made from the lining of an old skirt, and she’d borrowed a pair of shoes from one of her flatmates for the evening.
In the mirror, she adjusted the locket on its fine silver chain so that it lay flat against the beaded neckline, just below the delicate wings of her collarbones.
She rested a hand on her stomach for a moment, trying to calm the butterflies that seemed to flutter there. Would he be here? Would he have remembered the promise they’d made on Christmas Eve to meet up here again on 31 December? Had he really meant it?
That evening, in the bar on the Rue de Rivoli, he’d sent drinks to their table, the waiter setting the glasses in front of her and her two friends and then pointing out the blonde German officer at the bar who had ordered them. The other girls had giggled and nodded, and the man had taken this as invitation enough to weave his way through the crowds of Christmas Eve revellers and pull up a chair. He had introduced two of his fellow officers and then turned to pay particular attention to Claire, fixing her with his ice blue eyes and complimenting her on her dress. He was fluent in French, although every now and then, as an aside, he would joke with his friends in German which she couldn’t understand. He was the senior officer in the group and seemed to be popular and convivial, ordering more drinks and insisting on paying for them all. At the end of the evening as he’d helped her on with her coat, he’d asked her to meet him here, tonight, to celebrate the end of the old year.
‘Have you ever tasted champagne?’ he’d asked. ‘No? A French sophisticate like yourself? I’m amazed. Well, we shall have to see if we can remedy that.’
She had felt flattered that, of the three seamstresses, he had singled her out, and the other girls had teased her about it as they hurried back to the apartment before the curfew fell. She’d whispered his parting words to herself before she fell asleep on Christmas Eve: a French sophisticate. He was handsome and rich but the most seductive thing of all was the way he saw her and reflected that image back to herself as someone new, as someone grown-up and sophisticated, as the woman she longed to be.
Nervously adjusting the locket at her throat one more time, she smoothed the gown over her hips. Then she pushed her way through the throng of revellers clustered at the top of the staircase, laughing and exclaiming as they met up with friends, and began to make her way down into the ballroom. She scanned the crowd, and then her face lit up with a shy smile as she caught