completed on the promenade overlooking the Allier River.
Seemed like an eternity ago.
Mama stumbled down the stairs to tell me she was going to bed for the rest of the day and not to expect supper. Her eyes were puffier than they were earlier, and her nose was raw and red as if she had been wiping it with coarse linen rather than a hanky. ‘And I don’t want to talk about your father. Not today, and not tomorrow either.’ She rewrapped her peignoir and went back upstairs to her bedroom. ‘You should get some rest, too. You’re going to need it.’
I took a second bottle of wine with me down the corridor, heading to my room, drinking as I went. I tried not to think of Gérard, but he was like a hook stuck in my mouth, tugging at the corners of my thoughts, every one of them ending with his hands on my body.
I threw open my bedroom door and stood in the doorway, waiting for my eyes to adjust, gazing upon my room for the first time in so very long.
The silver-plated hairbrush I got the summer before was on my commode. Dried flowers hung from my wall near the window, white ones I had picked from the garden last May. Even the stockings I had soaked and rinsed months ago were still strung up, waiting for me to fold and put away—as if I hadn’t left, and as if nothing had changed.
I crawled under my sheets and got into bed, thinking of Mama upstairs by herself and Papa in the city, and me all alone in my room, which brought on an unexpected gush of tears before I finally fell asleep. I woke up to Mama sitting on the edge of my bed, telling me it was morning and I had to get up.
‘It’s nearly seven o’clock.’ Mama threw her silky peignoir over her legs. ‘You’ll have to take your bicycle since your father took the car.’
All I could do was groan, feeling every drop of wine I had drunk.
‘You know what you have to do today. Don’t you, Adèle?’
‘Gérard Baudoin.’ His name felt like sandpaper in my mouth. ‘I’ll have to take whatever shame he throws my way if I plan on getting a foot in the door of the Hotel du Parc.’
‘And Charlotte,’ Mama said. ‘You need to see her first thing. She’ll be expecting it.’
‘I know.’ I sat up to rub a dull pain in my back.
‘Not used to sleeping in a real bed, are you?’
‘I suppose not.’ My eyes closed again, and I felt myself nod off while I was sitting up, only to jerk suddenly awake with Mama watching.
‘You have to get up,’ she said.
‘I know.’ I rubbed my ears and was able to throw off the covers.
‘Oh, Adèle…’ she breathed. ‘Much has changed since you’ve left. The vineyard, our family… and Vichy. If it weren’t for the French uniforms you couldn’t tell the difference between them and a German.’
‘The police?’
She nodded. ‘Gérard. Even more than before.’
‘In what ways?’
‘Isa Brochard from the farm behind—he arrested her personally, sent her to the big prison in Drancy. Someone said she was born in Warsaw, but I’ve never heard a foreign word come out of her mouth.’ Mama pulled a cigarette from her case and the cloisonné from her pocket. ‘I’ve been bringing her husband meat pies when I can—when the rabbits are around. My heart pains for their little ones. I don’t think they know.’
‘What do you mean they don’t know?’
Mama struck her lighter several times and then paused to give it a shake. ‘He still sets the table for four. I can only imagine what he’s told them.’ She struck the lighter again, but much harder and a low-burning flame ignited from a spark.
‘I thought she grew up in the Dordogne.’
Mama took a long drag from her cigarette. ‘Like I said, I never heard a foreign word come out of her mouth. Madame Brochard was, however, of Jewish decent.’ She stared at a spot in the wall, and her voice turned faint. ‘She left so dignified, too…’
She shook her head after a long pause. ‘You have a tough job ahead of you, Adèle. Gérard is a very difficult man. I have complete faith in you, but it doesn’t mean I won’t worry. How are you going to do it? Do you have a plan?’
‘I’m going to be myself,’ I said. ‘He’s attracted to the way I am. He’ll be suspicious if I’m any