And then Thierry catches me and pulls me back to the safety of the pavement, holding me up as my legs threaten to give way beneath me.
Taking juddering breaths, I look into his face and I see fear written there behind the bewilderment. His eyes are searching mine, asking, Who is this crazy woman? Why would anyone run into the traffic like that? She is unbalanced, hysterical.
I can see it in his uncertainty, feel it in the way his touch has become tentative now, not solid and reassuring like it was before.
I’ve ruined it. I’ve proven to myself what I’ve always feared, that I am too damaged to be loved. I’m not strong enough for this. Perhaps Simone was right in the first place: I never should have tried to find out Claire’s story. I should have left the questions unasked, let history lie. I was coping, before. On my own. With sudden, breathtaking clarity, I see that I can’t inflict the darkness that I carry inside me on Thierry – this man who is standing beside me, tentatively putting a hand on my arm to hold me in case I bolt again. I care about him too much.
‘Come,’ he says, ‘you’ve had a terrible shock. Let’s find a café, get you a cup of English tea?’ He smiles, trying to make things right again.
I shake my head. ‘I’m sorry, Thierry,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’
‘Okay, then I’ll take you home.’
But it’s there now, between us. Something has shifted. Something has been broken and it cannot be repaired. He leaves me at my door, tries to kiss me, but I turn away pretending to search in my bag for my keys. And when he says goodbye, I can’t quite meet his eyes.
I have to let him go.
1943
Mademoiselle Vannier had come upstairs to look for the three girls when none of them turned up for work on Monday morning, and had discovered the apartment in its abandoned state. It was clear that something terrible had happened, but where the girls had gone was a complete mystery. Their absence had been the source of much whispered conjecture amongst the other seamstresses in the days that followed.
And so there were gasps of surprise when Mireille appeared in the sewing room. Without a word, she walked across and took her seat at the table between the two empty chairs belonging to Claire and Vivienne.
The stunned silence gave way to a tirade of questions.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Where are Claire and Vivi?’
‘What happened?’
‘They’re gone,’ she said, bluntly. ‘The Gestapo came and took them. No, I don’t know why. I don’t know where they are now. I don’t know anything.’
Mademoiselle Vannier shushed the seamstresses. ‘Quiet, now, everyone. That’s enough. Leave Mireille in peace and get on with your work.’
Mireille shot her a glance of gratitude as she set her sewing things on the table and, with trembling fingers, began to tack together the pieces of a waistband.
She had scarcely slept and had eaten nothing since her return the night before, unable to get the images of Claire and Vivi’s faces out of her head. The dyer had said they were in bad shape. She couldn’t bear to think about what they had been through during those four days in the Avenue Foch. But they were alive, she reminded herself. That was all that mattered.
She tried hard to concentrate on her sewing. One stitch, then the next, then the next . . . It helped her to shut out the images of her friends’ pain-wracked faces, for a little while at least.
Heads bent over their work, the others shot surreptitious glances at her from beneath their eyelashes. The room was filled with an oppressive silence, heavy with questions unasked and unanswered. Then, without a word, one of the girls slid across from her usual seat into one of the empty chairs next to Mireille. After a moment’s hesitation, the girl on the other side followed suit. Scarcely glancing up from her work, Mireille nodded her thanks to them for their gesture of solidarity. And then, blinking the tears from her eyes, she forced herself to sew another stitch and another . . .
Returning upstairs to the silence and the darkness of the apartment was almost as bad as it had been the night before. She made herself heat up a little soup and eat it, wrapping herself in a blanket to keep out the bitter cold. She was just washing up her bowl when a soft tap on the