across the bed. A jar of pens and pencils which had sat on the windowsill lay smashed on the floor, and sheets of crumpled paper had been scattered from the overturned wastepaper bin.
Mireille sank slowly to the floor and buried her face in her hands. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Not Vivi. Not Claire. You should have taken me, not them.’
It was only later, when she reached the dyer’s shop, gasping for breath having run all the way and hammering on his door, begging him to let her in, that she realised she was still clutching Claire’s lost glove.
Mireille must have forgotten her key, Claire had thought, as she went down to answer the door. So she was smiling when she opened it. But her smile froze into a mask of horror when she registered the black and silver insignia on the caps of the three men who stood there.
Over the past few months, the anxiety she’d felt following her encounter with Ernst that summer’s day outside the Vélodrôme d’Hiver had receded into the background and over time had become just one of the facets of the ever-present tapestry of fear that formed the backdrop to daily life in a time of war. Every now and then, he would invade her troubled dreams and she’d wake to find Vivi at her bedside again, having been awoken herself by Claire’s cries, hushing her, reassuring her that everything was alright.
But now she found herself in a nightmare from which no one could awaken her. The look of cold impassivity on the faces of the three men was more horrifying to her than the grotesquely leering gargoyles that had pursued her in her dreams. She felt a numbness descend in her mind and her body as the first of the men demanded that she take them upstairs to the apartment so that they could investigate a report they’d received.
‘What kind of a report?’ she asked, playing for time.
‘Suspected subversive activities on the premises,’ the Gestapo officer had barked back, holding out a hand to gesture that she should lead the way.
Her feet felt like lumps of lead as she climbed the stairs. She led them past the door to the sewing room, which was closed, as it always was at the weekends. Please, she prayed silently, let Vivi be in there. Let her hear them and hide. And don’t let Mireille return while they’re here. Let them search my room and find nothing and leave.
She found her voice then, forcing herself to speak so that if Vivi were in the atelier it would be a warning to her. ‘I can’t imagine what these “subversive activities” that you refer to might be,’ she said, as calmly as possible. She turned to look back to where they followed, close on her heels. ‘We make clothes here, nothing else.’
‘Shut up and keep going!’ One of the men gave her a push which made her almost lose her footing so that she had to grab the stair rail to stop herself falling forwards. She resumed the climb, treading heavily, deliberately, on each step so that if Vivi was in the apartment she might hear her coming.
‘But really, messieurs, I cannot imagine why you are here. As you will see, we have nothing to hide.’ Again she protested, raising her voice as much as she dared so that her words would carry, in the hope that they would alert Vivi to the additional sounds made by the three pairs of heavy boots on the staircase.
‘In that case, mademoiselle, you have nothing to fear from our visit, do you?’ The second man’s tone was a sinister sneer.
As she opened the door to the apartment, one of the men grabbed her arm and held it in a steely grip. She could feel the fingers of his black leather gloves bruising her skin through the layers of winter clothes she wore. The other two kicked open the doors leading off the hallway and Claire caught a glimpse of Mireille’s empty room. Then she saw Vivi’s startled expression and the quick movement of her hands as she pulled what looked like a pair of earphones from her head. Some sort of radio set sat on the table beside her.
‘Well, well, what have we here?’ The Gestapo officer shot a triumphant grin at his colleague. ‘We thought we’d come to trawl for sardines and instead it looks as if we’ve caught a shark in our net. What an unexpected pleasure!’