with rage and fear, but stood her ground, waiting for him to give her back her papers.
Just then a commotion broke out at the road block as the soldiers tried to detain a man. Ernst glanced over his shoulder towards the source of the shouting. A flicker of annoyance passed across his features as his work got in the way of the game he’d been enjoying playing with Claire. ‘Go on then, take it.’ He thrust her identity card at her. ‘I have more important things to do than waste any more of my time on you. But you can’t come through here. You’ll have to go the long way round. I’m afraid the privileges you once enjoyed are no longer available to you these days, Mademoiselle Claire.’ And he dismissed her with a flick of his hand before drawing the revolver from the leather holster slung from his belt and turning his back on her.
She walked away quickly, her whole body still shaking, and she replayed his words in her head as she hurried homewards. What had he meant by the things he’d said about Mireille and Vivi? Was he just testing to see how she’d react? She shouldn’t have let him goad her until her anger got the better of her. And what did he mean about having more important people to track down? She told herself it was simply malice – his love of the powerful position he now held, coupled with his annoyance at being rejected by her, but something in the way he’d said those words made her skin prickle with fear. And what were those buses full of frightened-looking people doing there? There were so many of them, being herded into the sports centre. Where would they sleep? How long would they be held there? And for what purpose?
Back in the apartment, she lay awake long into the hot night, gazing unseeing into the blackness, haunted by Ernst’s words and by the dark, scared eyes of the child who had looked out at her through the windows of that bus at it drove onwards towards its darkly sinister destination.
Harriet
When the pressure of work at Agence Guillemet builds to a level where tempers fray and exhaustion kicks in, I take refuge once again in the Palais Galliera. Sitting among the exhibits grounds me and always gives me that sense of reconnection with the roots of fashion, reminding me that these are more than just clothes: they are tangible relics of our history.
I wander through the main gallery, where an exhibition of 1970s fashions brighten the space with their vivid colours and flowing, hippy-ish lines.
I allow my thoughts to settle as I sort through the latest strands of family history that Simone has shared with me – both hers and mine. I’ve been reading up, too, about what was happening in Paris at the time. I realise that Claire witnessed the horrific Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup, when more than thirteen thousand Jews were arrested by the French police, as part of a Nazi-directed programme. They were held in unbearable conditions in the very heart of the city before being sent to the death camps. Of those thirteen thousand people, four thousand were children. And one of them was the little boy whose eyes, looking out of the bus window, haunted Claire’s dreams. How terrifying it is to think that, little by little, day by day, this vast city could have become so paralysed by fear and oppression that its people could have allowed that to happen.
My train of thought is interrupted by a woman in an elegantly cut black jacket who has walked into the gallery. Her silver-grey hair is cut into a bob and she looks vaguely familiar. Then I realise she’s the woman I saw here before, at the Lanvin exhibition. She stops to read the description of a psychedelic jumpsuit with widely flared sleeves, taking out a small notebook to jot down a few notes. Then she gives me a nod of recognition and a smile and continues on her way.
I check my watch. It’s time to get back to the office. We’re planning a product launch for the agency’s eco-cosmetic client and it’s going to be held on the Côte d’Azur in the summer. There are logistics to plan, models’ contracts to arrange as well as their hotels and transport, press releases to write and a particularly demanding photographer’s emails to reply to. Stress levels among the account managers are at an all-time