my grandmother must have been terrified at being captured and that she must have felt horrendously guilty that Vivi was caught too, apparently operating a wireless radio set from her attic room.
I read an article that says new research in the field of genetics has shown that an increased likelihood of suffering from depression can be inherited. Trauma can cause changes in some areas of a person’s DNA, it says, and these changes can be passed on to the next generations, one after the other.
I’m beginning to see how high the odds were stacked against my mother. Was there a genetic fragility in her make up – changes to her DNA that she inherited from the trauma Claire suffered – that caused her to snap when life’s knocks came? In her case, they came one after the other, like powerful waves knocking her off her feet. Abandonment, divorce, the demands of raising a child alone . . . Each time she tried to get up again, another wave knocked her back down. Some of the anger and hurt that I’ve felt towards my mother for years begins to shift slightly as I re-examine her life in this new light.
It takes me a few days to pluck up the courage, but after Simone tells me of Claire’s arrest I feel I have to go and see where she was taken. I have to be brave enough to trace her terrifying journey through the streets to a leafy arrondissement on the west side of the city. I ask Thierry to come with me to the Avenue Foch, for moral support.
These days, the former Gestapo offices are highly respectable apartment buildings in one of the most sought-after areas of the city. But in 1943, the elegant road was known by the French as ‘The Street of Horrors’. We stand in silence outside the cream stone facade of the buildings. A pigeon flutters on to the grey slate roof of number eighty-four, crooning softly to itself as it nods its way along the guttering.
‘Are you okay?’ Thierry asks, turning to look at me.
It’s only then that I realise I’m crying. It takes me by surprise. I almost never cry. He must think I make a habit of it though, after our trip to Brittany.
He takes my hand and then pulls me to him, kissing my hair as I bury my face in the folds of his jacket and sob.
I cry for all the people who were brought here, for their terror and their pain.
I’m crying for Claire.
I cry for humanity, for a world which can so easily be broken.
I’m crying for my mother.
And – at last – I find I’m crying for myself.
1943
It was several days before the dyer would allow Mireille to return to the apartment above Delavigne Couture. He and his wife hid her in the cellar of a safe house a few streets away from the shop and, despite her protestations that she had to go back to the Rue Cardinale, he insisted that she stay put. ‘We have eyes and ears on the streets,’ he told her. ‘We know that your friends have been taken to the Avenue Foch for questioning. If they are forced to talk, the Gestapo will come back for you as well. You know the rules: the first twenty-four hours are critical. We have to get a warning out to the rest of the network. Even after that, it will be too dangerous for you to be in the apartment while they are still holding your friends. What if they come back to search again and they find you there?’
‘But what if Claire and Vivi don’t talk? If they are released, I want to be there when they return.’
‘We have someone watching so we will know if and when they are released. I know it’s hard, but the best thing you can do – for their sakes as well as for your own – it to sit tight here. In a few days we will know, one way or another . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘Try to eat something now. Keep your strength up as best you can, eh?’
Those dark, lonely hours were some of the hardest Mireille had ever had to endure. Images of her friends’ faces floated before her: Claire’s gentle smile; Vivi’s eyes, filled with warmth. What was happening to them now? And now? And now? She could hardly bear to think. In her anguish, she lost control and beat her