Keeping her voice low, although her tone was urgent, Vivi said, ‘You know this is putting everything at a terrible risk, Mireille. We can’t allow the strands of the network to become entangled with one another. His presence here threatens all of us, right to the very top.’
Claire wondered what she meant by this, but noticed that Mireille seemed to understand the significance as she didn’t ask Vivi to explain further.
‘We have no option,’ Mireille whispered back. ‘What else can we do? Turn him out on to the streets with nowhere to go? He’ll be sure to be arrested sooner or later, and he knows where we live now. Even though he’s tough, he’s only human. You know what methods they use to get information out of people. Hiding him here is the safest option. The Arnauds don’t know my real name and they don’t know anything about my background so there’s very little they can give away.’
‘And the dyer? What if they divulge his role? If he’s arrested, we all go down.’
Mireille’s chin lifted and her dark curls trembled. Claire recognised the signs: this was her friend’s look of determination, not fear, and they all knew how stubborn she could be when she’d made her mind up about something.
‘I know, Vivi,’ Mireille replied. ‘But we all understood what we were getting in to. I still believe this is our safest option.’
A sad smile played over Vivi’s face as she seemed to accept that Mireille was right. ‘Very well,’ she said reluctantly, ‘we’ll hide him then. But none of the others downstairs must suspect a thing.’ She turned towards Claire. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Of course!’ Claire retorted, indignantly. ‘I’m just as involved as Mireille is. As involved as you, too, I expect,’ she couldn’t help adding.
Vivienne shot her a wary glance, but then let it go. ‘Come on then, we need to get him sorted out for the night. And this bedroom door needs to be kept locked from the inside. He won’t be able to risk moving around in the daytime. You know how these floorboards creak. Mademoiselle Vannier will be up here like a shot if she hears anyone up here when we’re all supposed to be in the atelier – especially if she suspects one of us might be hiding a man!’
Claire found it hard to sleep that night. She tossed and turned in the darkness and thought, at one point, that she heard the almost imperceptible pad of bare feet passing her door. Perhaps she’d imagined it, or maybe it was just one of the others going to use the bathroom, she told herself. When she did fall into a restless sleep, it was filled with troubled dreams of men in black uniforms chasing her through the streets, their boots loud on the pavement. As they caught up with her, she woke with a cry to find Vivi crouching by her bed, shaking her awake.
‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘I’m here. Everything will be alright.’
‘I was having a nightmare,’ Claire gasped, still shaken.
‘Shh, I know. You were talking in your sleep, I heard you through the wall. But it’s okay. You’re alright. We’re all okay. Try to get back to sleep.’
Claire shook her head. ‘I don’t want to sleep any more, in case the dreams come back.’
‘Come on then.’ Vivi held out a hand. We’ll go and make a tisane. We need to be up in half an hour, in any case.’
They tiptoed past Mireille’s door and crept into the kitchen to put the water on to heat, then sat in a companionable silence, cupping their hands around their bowls and inhaling the sweet-sharp smell of lemon balm tea.
‘How long do you think he’ll have to stay here?’
Vivienne drew her red-gold braid over one shoulder. ‘Not long. Don’t worry, they’ll get him out. And Mireille was right last night – hiding him here is the safest option all round. Now then, you and I and Mireille need to keep to our usual routines at work. It’s absolutely imperative that no one has any reason to suspect there’s anything out of the ordinary going on in the apartment on the fifth floor.’
Claire nodded and took a sip of her tea. Vivi’s calm presence was reassuring. The three girls were in this together now, bound not only by their friendship but by the secrets that they kept for one another.
Mireille was wondering how she might find an excuse to visit the dyer the next day, when, fortuitously, Mademoiselle Vannier