of another working week float in through my window from the street below. I’m just hanging the last of my clothes on the rail when I hear the apartment door open. Simone sings out, ‘Coucou!’ She appears in the doorway of my room and holds up a bottle, the glass beaded with dew from the chilled white wine within. ‘Would you like a drink? I thought we should celebrate your first evening in Paris.’ She lifts the shopping bag she holds in her other hand and says, ‘I got a few bits and pieces to accompany it, too, as you haven’t had time to explore the shops yet. I can show you where things are tomorrow.’
She looks around the room, taking in the few personal touches that I’ve added – a couple of books sit by the bed alongside my bottle of perfume and a painted china trinket box of my mother’s that contains the few items of jewellery that I own: some pairs of earrings and a string of pearls. I keep the charm bracelet in it, too, when I take it off at night.
Noticing the photograph, she sets down her bag of shopping and stoops to look at it more closely.
I point at the blonde on the left of the group. ‘That’s my grandmother, Claire, outside this very building. She’s the reason I’m here.’
Simone glances up at me, a look of incredulity on her face. ‘And that,’ she says, pointing at the figure on the right of the trio, is my grandmother, Mireille. Standing outside this very building with your grandmother Claire.’
She laughs, as my jaw drops in amazement.
‘You’re joking!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s an incredible coincidence.’
Simone nods, but then shakes her head. ‘Or maybe it’s no coincidence at all. I’m here because my grandmother inspired me with the stories of her life in Paris during the war, and it’s because of her links with the world of couture that I’m working here at Agence Guillemet. It seems you and I have both been led here by a shared history.’
I nod slowly, pondering this, then pick up the framed picture, bringing it closer to examine Mireille’s face in detail. With her laughing eyes and the tendrils of hair that refuse to be tamed by the band which draws them back from her forehead, I imagine that I can make out a resemblance between her and Simone.
I point at the third figure, the young woman in the centre of the group. ‘I wonder who she was? Her name is written on the back of the picture: Vivienne.’
Simone’s expression grows serious suddenly and I glimpse something I can’t quite identify, a flicker of sadness, or fear, or pain perhaps? A wariness in her eyes. But then she recomposes her features and says, with careful insouciance, ‘I believe their friend, Vivienne, lived and worked with them here too. Isn’t it astounding to imagine the three of them working right here for Delavigne?’
Am I imagining it, or is she trying to divert the subject away from Vivienne?
Simone continues, ‘My mamie Mireille told me that they slept in these little rooms, above the atelier, during the war years.’
For a moment, I seem to hear the sound of laughter echoing from the walls of the cramped apartment as I imagine Claire, Mireille and Vivienne here.
‘Can you tell me more about your grandmother’s time here in the 1940s?’ I ask eagerly. ‘It may hold clues to some of the questions I have about my own family history.’
Simone glances at the photograph, her expression thoughtful. Then she raises her eyes to meet mine and she says, ‘I can tell you what I know of Mireille’s story. And it is inextricably linked with the stories of Claire and Vivienne. But Harriet, perhaps you should only ask those questions if you are absolutely certain that you want to know the answers.’
I meet her gaze steadily. Should I deny myself this opportunity of finding out about the only family to which I have any feeling of connection? At the thought, a flash of disappointment passes through me, so strong it makes my breath catch in my chest.
I think of the fragile thread, weaving its way back through the years, binding me to my mother, Felicity, and binding her to her own mother, Claire.
And then I nod my head. Whatever the story – whoever I really am – I need to know.
1940
Paris was a very different city.
Of course, some things looked the same: the exclamation mark of the Eiffel Tower still