apartment. Their paths seemed to take them in very different directions and the distance between them felt wider than ever. So maybe the presence of this new girl would help to lighten the atmosphere a bit.
That evening, the three girls shared their evening meal together, and Vivienne produced a bar of chocolate to round off their supper of bread and soup. ‘One of the few advantages of Lille being part of Belgium these days!’ she said, as she peeled back the wrapper emblazoned with the Côte d’Or palm tree and elephant. ‘They really do make very good chocolate, when they can get the ingredients.’
Mireille’s mouth watered in anticipation and she gave a small sigh of contentment as she took one of the squares and let it melt on her tongue. ‘I can’t remember when I last tasted anything so delicious. How did you manage to get your hands on it?’
Vivienne smiled, and her wide eyes seemed to illuminate her whole face when she did so. ‘It was a going-away present from my family. I think they were worried that there wouldn’t be anything to eat in the big, bad city.’
‘Well, they were pretty much right on that front,’ laughed Mireille, gesturing towards the empty soup bowls and the scattering of crumbs on the breadboard which were all that remained of their scant supper. ‘Are your family still in Lille?’
‘My parents live north of there.’ Vivienne waved a hand vaguely and passed the chocolate again.
‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ asked Claire as she popped another square into her mouth.
‘Just one brother. How about you?’
As the girls chatted, savouring every last delicious morsel of the chocolate, it seemed to Mireille that a new friendship was being shared around the table as well that evening – and that tasted even better than anything a Belgian chocolatier could have concocted. Claire, too, seemed happier and more relaxed with a new flatmate to fill the silences, as intangible and as chilly as a river mist, that had permeated the apartment in recent weeks.
As well as bridging the distance between Mireille and Claire, Vivienne brought with her news of a very different France beyond the city limits.
‘When Hitler’s armies advanced, Lille was besieged. It was a terrifying few days. The French garrison fought desperately and managed to hold the city long enough to allow allied troops to be evacuated from Dunkirk. But in the end, the power of the Nazis was overwhelming. They drove their tanks into the centre of town and our troops were forced to surrender. Thousands of soldiers were marched through the Grand’Place as prisoners of war. It took hours for them to pass by.’ Vivienne shook her head, recalling the sight. ‘And then all those thousands of men were taken away. And suddenly our city wasn’t French any more. The Germans drew new lines on their maps and decreed that Lille was now part of the Belgian administration. It’s been a bewildering couple of years.’
Vivienne described how she had been forced to work in the spinning mills, producing thread for the Nazi war effort. ‘But I managed to continue to make some money on the side with my dressmaking. Having no new clothes, it turned out that my skills were needed more than ever by our friends and neighbours. I have perfected the art of remaking coats into dresses and dresses into skirts. I even made a suit for the Comtesse de Rivault, out of a pair of curtains that she’d salvaged from her home before it was appropriated as a billet for German officers. She was the one who helped me get the job here at Delavigne Couture. She was a good client, before the war.’
As Mireille lay in her bed that night, waiting for sleep to come, she pondered her new friend. Vivi, as they had quickly taken to calling her, seemed a true kindred spirit and Mireille was glad to have her in the flat. And yet, as the hunger pangs – which those few squares of chocolate had been unable to assuage – griped in her belly, she realised that Vivi had disclosed very little information about herself. She had shared lots of details about her work in a local dressmaking atelier before the war had overwhelmed Lille, where she had specialised in the tricky job of sewing chiffon evening gowns for society ladies; she had told them how hard the work had been in the factory, running the machinery that spun thousands of yards of yarn