fists against the rough stone walls of the cellar until her knuckles bled. Then, sobbing, she sank to the floor and wept, raw angry sobs, wrenched from her guts, that tore at her throat.
She thought she would go crazy.
As the hours turned into days, she cried out her anger and frustration until all that remained was a cold, hard determination to survive this ordeal, just as she hoped Claire and Vivi were surviving the ordeals of their own.
She’d lost track of time, but at last the dyer opened the cellar door and led her out of the darkness and back up into the grey light of a winter’s evening. ‘It should be safe, now, for you to return to the atelier. Your friends are extremely courageous. They never gave in, even under torture,’ he told her. ‘They didn’t talk.’
Hope leapt in her heart. ‘Oh, thank God! Are they alright? Are they coming home?’
He shook his head, his expression grave. ‘We have word that they are in bad shape, but they are still alive. They have been released from the Avenue Foch. But they are being taken to a prison, where political prisoners are held. Come now, my child. I will take you home.’
Never had she thought that she would have missed the sewing room, but as she pushed open the door the familiar smell of starched fabric and the sight of the seamstresses’ chairs pushed in neatly around the table in the darkened room made her heart turn over with a longing for it all to be as it had been a week ago. She wished that a lamp would cast a pool of light on to one end of the table, making Vivi’s copper braid shine as she bent her head to her work. She longed to hear Claire’s voice, scolding Vivi as she told her that she was working too late, as usual, and that she should put away whatever it was she was doing and come upstairs for supper.
But the darkness and the silence filled the room, amplifying its emptiness.
She took the next few flights of stairs slowly, putting off for as long as possible the moment when she would unlock the door to the apartment on the fifth floor and step into an emptiness and a silence more terrible than any she’d experienced in the past few days.
She steeled herself, then walked in.
Her own room had been largely untouched – presumably the Gestapo had been too intent on the capture of Claire and Vivienne to bother with anything else – but she was expecting to see the awful reminders of their presence in the other rooms. To Mireille’s surprise, though, she realised that someone must have been into the apartment in her absence. Claire and Vivi’s rooms were tidy now, the cupboard doors closed, clothes folded and put back into drawers, the chair set to rights. The work of a friend, surely, rather than an enemy?
She caught sight of a soft gleam in the darkness of Claire’s room. On the windowsill beside the bed lay the silver locket that Mireille had given her two Christmases ago. Mireille picked it up and ran the chain slowly through her fingers. After a moment’s hesitation, she fastened the clasp around her neck. She would wear it for Claire and for Vivi, she decided, until they came home again. She closed the doors to their bedrooms and then walked, slowly, to her own.
She didn’t bother to remove her clothes, just kicked off her shoes and pulled the blankets over her shivering body. Lying in the darkness, she remembered something the dyer had said earlier. When he’d come to release her, seeing the expression of relief on her face when he’d told her the news that Claire and Vivi were still alive, he had laid a gentle hand on hers. ‘Don’t get your hopes up too high, my child,’ he’d said, his expression sorrowful. ‘Your friends have saved you. And the rest of us, too. But they still may not be able to save themselves.’
She clenched her hand, in defiance, around the locket that hung above her heart. Her still-raw knuckles were covered in scabs which cracked and oozed blood as she curled her fingers into a fist. Claire and Vivi were still alive. They had endured the horrors of torture at the Gestapo’s headquarters. Surely, now, nothing else could be as bad? They were still together. Surely they would survive?
Claire had continued to hold on tight to Vivi’s hand until