don’t think Gérard was even prepared for the number of eyes that set upon us. He smiled. ‘After you,’ he said, and the maître d' showed us to our table. ‘Hold the bag up,’ he whispered from behind.
The waiter handed us menus and poured us some wine. ‘Get whatever you’d like, Adèle,’ he said, but when the waiter asked me what I wanted to eat, Gérard spoke up.
‘She’ll have the steak. Medium rare.’
‘I don’t like steak,’ I said, just to see what he’d say, but he kept talking.
‘I’ll have the steak as well.’ He handed our menus to the waiter but looked at me, a strange smile on his face, ordering the rest of his meal. ‘And potatoes with as much butter as you can spare.’
‘What’s that monsieur?’ the waiter said, and Gérard looked at him, a little cock in his neck.
‘I’m a member of the Vichy police.’ He winked.
The waiter wrote something on the order. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘Do that,’ Gérard said, but it was more of a threat.
I looked around the restaurant, at the women, eating their medium-rare stakes and the men with their very own butter dish. ‘Butter,’ I said.
‘You want some, don’t you?’ he said, and I shook my head. ‘What’s wrong with you? This is where the regime dines,’ he said, as if he knew what I was thinking. ‘Be glad you have your hands in my pockets tonight. I heard there’s a food shortage in Lyon.’
Gérard ate his buttered potatoes in heaping gulps, never offering me a smidge of his butter, which I wouldn’t have taken anyway, even if the restaurant was full of miserable people from the regime; the butter, I thought, was worth more than the dress. But the steak—the steak made me salivate. I took a drink of water before gulping some wine.
Marguerite would tell me to eat the steak. Gérard would expect it. He glanced at me once. I picked up my knife and cut into it, bloody and soft.
Gérard gulped down a chunk of steak, pointing across the room with his knife. ‘Look there,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that your sister?’
‘Charlotte?’ I sat up tall. ‘What is she doing here?’ I said.
‘Eating dinner,’ he said, but I shook my head.
‘That’s not what I mean,’ I said.
Gérard pointed again, talking with a full mouth. ‘That’s why.’
Henri had walked out of the restrooms and sat down next to her. A little gasp came from my mouth. Gérard had practically admitted that only collaborators ate at La Table. Mama was right. Charlotte never looked up at him, and they ate as if they were seated alone, strangers.
Gérard smeared the last bit of butter he had onto his potatoes. ‘That will be us someday, Adèle.’ He licked the butter from his spoon with his fat tongue. ‘Eating dinner. Husband and wife.’
‘I told you I don’t want anything black at my wedding, Gérard. Remember? I said. ‘Thank you for the dress and dinner, but you know where I stand.’
He laughed, showing his open mouth, chewing up the last of his steak.
I looked at Charlotte from afar, eating her dinner. I hadn’t seen Henri since before the convent. He seemed older, with a moustache and a tailored suit and cold eyes. The longer I watched them the more it felt like I was intruding.
Gérard tapped his watch. ‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘I should take you home.’
‘No—’ I said, and then swallowed. ‘I mean. Why rush?’ I motioned to my plate and the half-eaten stake. ‘I’m not finished.’
The last thing I wanted was for Gérard to come back out to the estate, poke around inside, or to see Luc. I had to think of a way to keep him away, but if he thought I didn’t want him there, he’d just come by every day.
‘You know you almost gave Mama a heart attack,’ I said, and he chuckled, sitting back, feeling his belly.
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I?’
I nodded. ‘You really did, Gérard,’ I said, and then shook my head.
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.
He sat forward, elbows on the table. ‘Tell me.’
I took a deep breath, thinking of Marguerite and my training; codes weren’t going to help me through his one. I took a drink of water. ‘It’s this, you see… Mama has never liked you,’ I said. ‘Well she did, the boy you used—’
‘Enough of that.’ He pointed his finger at me, and I shrugged.
‘It was no wonder she planted all those thoughts about the nunnery into my head—’