a navy blue dress, black stockings, and a pair of laced shoes. There were new undergarments and a nightgown as well. A younger girl called Pauline had been asked to show her the dormitory. It was a special section for the Jewish girls, hidden in the attic behind a wrought-iron gate and a heavy wooden door. The room was guarded by an old nun, Sister Félicité, a very deep sleeper who snored quite loudly. The sister slept with a broom in her lap, there to defend herself and her girls if the need arose. She claimed to be fierce, but she was nearly eighty and walked with a limp and she didn’t even manage to scare her own students when she threatened they would have to clean the stone floors with a scrub brush if they didn’t behave.
Pauline, also from Berlin, was to bring Lea to their room. She was eager to show off her French.
“The sisters practiced with me until I lost my accent. It’s best to do as they say.”
Remember your own room, the blue rug on the floor, the way the light came in through the curtains in the morning, the sound of my voice as I called to you in the park, my darling, my girl, light of my life, come here and give me a hug, eat this apple, sit on this bench, watch the birds above us, and the sky that’s so bright, take the love that I have for you that will never end.
Lea quickly dressed in her new uniform. She did her best not to think, she pushed away dark thoughts until they were folded into a tiny corner of her mind, behind a locked door. At night the heron came to Lea’s window and stood on the ledge, so close she could feel his heart beating. She knew that Ava had told him to watch over her. She is nothing to me, Lea told herself. She is not my mother, she is not my cousin, she may not even be a woman. She is here because she has to be, because she was made to be, because she cannot make her own decisions or cast her own fate.
Lea found her way along the confusing corridors of the convent, but her stomach twisted with nerves. She had already decided; Julien would be her only friend. She needed no others. Tu me connais, she would have told him if she could. You alone know me.
At lunch, Lea was so famished she could barely restrain herself from reaching for the hard heels of bread until all of the prayers were recited. Then the other girls chattered away about the baker who had left; there’d been nothing to eat but old bread all week, although they knew they should be grateful. After lunch had been served Sister Marie stood to announce there was a new student. Lea had no choice but to stand as well and be introduced as Lillie Perrin. Everyone greeted her in unison, in perfect French, except for a petite, dark girl called Renée, a recent arrival from Berlin who refused to speak anything but German. She had been rescued, fortunate to have been among a group who had managed to escape when being moved from one camp to another. She had a tattooed number on her arm that she rubbed at when she thought no one was looking and she never undressed in front of the others. The OSE brought her to France, and to this convent. Her name had been Rachel. Her mother, father, uncles, aunts, grandparents, sisters, and brothers had all been on the trains. She was older than Lea, perhaps already fifteen. In the attic, her bed was next to Lea’s. That evening as they prepared for bed, Renée glared at Lea. She looked fragile, but there was a core of fire inside her. “Rühr mich nicht an,” Renée said. Never touch me. “Und schau nie unter mein Bett.” And never look under my bed.
It was difficult to follow the rules, much less understand them, and now, after Lea’s encounter with Renée, she felt even more unsure of herself. No one dared to break the silence before going to chapel in the morning or at breakfast. There were scores of prayers to recite, many more than her mother had taught her. The sisters looked sterner than Sister Marie in their stiff black habits. She thought of biting the soldier in the alleyway, of the wolves in the snow,