But then she heard a familiar voice, softly saying her name, and she breathed again.
Monsieur Leroux accepted her offer of a tisane, and then insisted on making it himself while she stayed in the sitting room, curled up in her blanket. He handed her a cup of lemon balm tea and she cradled it in her hands, letting it warm her.
‘Is there any news?’ she asked once he’d settled himself in the chair opposite.
His eyes were filled with pain when he raised them to meet hers. ‘Nothing more yet. They’re being held in the prison at Fresnes.’
She sat up. ‘Fresnes? But that’s not far. Can we go and see them at least?’
He shook his head. ‘Even if they would let anyone visit them, it would be too risky. The intelligence I have is that Claire and Vivi managed to convince the Gestapo that you’d already been picked up. Things are so chaotic these days that they can’t easily trace whether or not it’s true, so they’ve stopped looking for you now. If you turn up, you’ll be arrested on the spot. And it would make things even worse for the other two.’
‘But what will happen to them in prison?’
He shrugged. ‘We can’t be sure. I have a contact on the inside, so I’m hoping to get some more news soon. Mostly they use Fresnes as a holding place for political prisoners before moving them on to one of the prison camps in Germany. If they are deported it won’t be easy to keep track of them. The people who are taken to those places . . . they tend to disappear.’
She studied his face for a moment. Outwardly, he was trying to maintain his usual calm facade. But the shadows beneath his eyes and the lines of pain etched around his mouth betrayed the depth of his anguish. Vivi was clearly more to him than simply another agent in the network that he controlled. Perhaps she really had been his mistress. And perhaps those other rumours about him made more sense now, too. All those women he’d been cultivating – had they had other uses as well? Did he convince some to become agents, persuading them to take on roles within the network as he had done with Vivi? And were others the ‘contacts on the inside’ he spoke of, the ‘grey mice’ he’d wined and dined and clothed in couture, feeding him with intelligence from inside the Avenue Foch and the prison at Fresnes? She’d always warmed to him and had trusted him with her life. But now she wondered whether there might be a ruthlessly cold and manipulative side to him as well. Were Vivi and Claire simply expendable pawns in a horrific game of chess being played out across Europe?
As if reading her thoughts, he said quietly, ‘You know, I always believed that the network was more important than any individual within it. But losing Vivienne and Claire has proven me wrong.’ For a moment, his whole face crumpled as he tried to stop himself from breaking down. A single, terrible sob wrenched itself out of him, from deep down inside, and he covered his eyes with his hands.
Quickly, Mireille set down her cup and moved across to him. She knelt on the floor at his side and took his hands in hers. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the pain in their depths made her feel ashamed for having doubted him even for a moment. It was clear that he cared as deeply about Claire and Vivi as she did.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not wrong. You know as well as I do how determined the two of them were – are – to play their parts. They’d be furious if they thought the network had fallen apart because of them. If . . .’ She stopped, then corrected herself. ‘When they come back, do you want to be the one to tell them that we gave up because of them? Of course not! We have to keep going. Because we have to put an end to the terror and the arrests and the disappearances. We have to win.’
As she spoke, Mireille felt the strength of her conviction return, flowing through her veins with a heat that seemed to thaw the icy grip of the winter.
He squeezed her hand, then let go of it in order to fish in his pocket for a handkerchief with which to mop his face. Once he’d