difference in sound my skull had made compared to the sewing machine.
‘I’m very late.’ Her voice turned exaggeratingly high. ‘You want me to sew something up for you? Or can I be on my way?’
He poked the bags once more, slow and deep, the barrel of his gun dangerously close to my body. Then he pulled his gun back and questioned Mme Dubois about her documents. I wanted to breathe deeply and quickly, feeling very much out of breath, but couldn’t for fear of moving, my heart beating rapidly in my chest.
The boot closed with the squeal of a rusty hinge, and a radiating pain where his gun had hit me spread over my head. Then I passed out or fell asleep, because I didn’t remember the car starting up again. All I felt was a sudden lurch and a waft of air from when Mme Dubois pulled open the back seat. ‘We’re here, Adèle.’
I opened my crusty eyes, swollen with a bruised face. We had stopped on a dirt road somewhere in the middle of a field. Another car’s headlamps shone on us from a near distance, its engine running. Mme Dubois helped me out of the car with one hand, the dress she gave me sticking to the wounds on my skin.
‘God bless you, love.’ Mme Dubois hopped back into the car and then waited for me to move, raising her eyebrows as I stood slumped over, holding my stomach. ‘Your transfer has all been arranged.’
‘Transfer?’
‘You’re in hiding now. Just be glad you’re not dead.’ She reached through her open window and patted my arm. ‘Go along.’
I started toward the car, shuffling through the dirt, the headlamps lighting up the flowers on my floral dress. The engines were a duet of burning petrol and sputters. I pulled the blue scarf from my head, my sight ebbing in the colour black from the whiteness of the light. Feet from the car, still I saw no one. Then, out from the darkness, a figure draped in something heavy and long stepped into the light. A nun. I stopped, and she pulled her veil back.
A cool smile spread on my face. ‘Marguerite.’
She reached into a hidden pocket and pulled out a man’s lighter and my old cigarette case—the thing was full of Gitanes. ‘Looks like you could use these.’ I held in a laugh simply because it hurt too much, but then started to cry. I had forgotten about that damn case—the one I had thrown across the room after Marguerite asked me to go back to Vichy.
‘What about the smoke?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, helping me into the car.
A driver—a girl—I didn’t know, sped off just as I closed the door, turning her headlamps off, using moonlight to drive. I slunk down into the cracked leather seat and smoked, the cigarette hanging off my lips in between puffs because I was too weak to lift my arm. A rash bumped over Marguerite’s cheek, but she never said a word. Not long after, she threw the skirt of her habit over my legs as a blanket.
After a dry, hard gulp I told Marguerite about Gérard, and how Mama and Papa were covering up the murder. ‘My sister turned me in.’ I could barely say her name it hurt so much. ‘Charlotte.’ Marguerite put her hand on mine and I closed my eyes, the sound of the leather belt slapping against my skin and Charlotte’s pleading voice replaying over and over in my mind like a sad, haunting song. I leaned into her shoulder, shivering, though I wasn’t cold, and she petted my head.
We pulled up to a cottage nestled between two hills on the outskirts of Lyon just before sunrise, the horizon a mix of sunny-pink and orange blossom bursting through the clouds. There was a long pause as we sat next to each other in the back seat of the car, looking out the window.
‘This is where I’ve been sleeping most the time,’ she said. ‘We call it the hill cottage. It’s a safe house for many résistants.’ Marguerite took her headpiece off and gave it to the girl driver who meticulously folded it along with the wimple Marguerite pulled from her neck. ‘Lyon is different now from when it was part of the Free Zone; Vichy has the Milice, but here we have more Gestapo than anything. It’s just safer to stay out here,’ she said, taking rests between her words, ‘than at the convent.’