‘You’re forgetting the power of love,’ reminded Jean wistfully. ‘That can make even rational people do crazy things.’
‘I know how it all looks, and what everyone believes,’ continued Sophie, ‘but I keep coming back to her trip up to London in 1944 – and if she was there on war business – and asking myself: why would she do that if she was planning on becoming a traitor? It’s all so intriguing.’
‘Well,’ said Jean, getting up and collecting all the dishes, ‘I just hope it doesn’t all end in tears. What if you find out she was involved in Nazi atrocities? She could have killed people, who knows? I just hope for your sake, Sophie, continuing looking for answers here doesn’t end up making the whole sorry tale even worse.’
‘So, what now?’ asked Jamie, genuinely interested.
‘I think I need to go to Paris. There may be more war records and information about the Resistance, and I need to be where Vivienne was. Also, there is a chance some of Marcus Vonstein’s relatives live there.’
Jean looked up from the suds she was amassing in her washing-up bowl. ‘Please be careful with them. If their grandfather was a Nazi…’
Sophie felt exasperated. ‘I doubt they are too. And anyway, I am not Vivienne, Auntie Jean. This is a completely different time.’
‘But the past has a way of repeating itself,’ Jean stated solemnly. ‘I would just hate for you to get hurt.’
Jamie smiled. ‘Mum, you are the voice of gloom and doom.’ He gripped Sophie’s hand. ‘I think you should go, even if it turns out everything is what it originally seems. If fate went to all this trouble to open this door, you should at least walk through it.’
Sophie nodded, grateful for his support. She thought about Emily, and how visiting her grave brought her so much solace. Maybe finding Vivienne’s would do the same for this unfinished story somehow, and at least Great-Uncle Tom would know where his sister was buried.
But she also couldn’t help feeling there was something larger for her waiting on the other side of this story, as if this were a bigger part of her own destiny too.
17
1943
For four weeks, Vivi’s life continued to fall into a comfortable rhythm. Each week she explored the city, read to children, carried documents and delivered messages. Three times a week she successfully communicated intelligence back and forth between France and SOE in England.
Vivi was ever meticulous about her procedure, never leaving the antenna outside to be detected and shutting down her wireless after fifteen minutes so there was less chance of the enemy detecting her broadcasts. She also took alternative routes whenever she visited her Resistance cell, which she would do twice a week to communicate instructions from London and receive any of their new requests in return.
As the days of the war forged ahead, Vivi wondered how long she would be in France, but that question was settled faster for her than she’d expected.
The last time she would stay under the Renoirs’ roof was on a bleak night. Paris had been enduring an onslaught of a bombing campaign from the Allied forces, and it was on the third of those nights that the air-raid siren had sounded right in the middle of her broadcast. She cut it short to get to the shelter, when a substantial bomb came down near to the house, shaking the residence and throwing her to the floor. The walls of her bedroom crumbled in around her, and dirt and debris covered her bed and the wireless.
Her ears rang with the noise, and when the brick dust cleared, she heard someone screaming from somewhere else in the house and recognised it was Yvette. Her first instinct was to find her. Jumping to her feet, she raced through the building calling to her, ‘Yvette, where are you? Yvette!’
Monsieur and Madame Renoir were out visiting family and had planned to stay the night so as not to have to rush back for the curfew, so the two girls were home alone. Yvette continued to cry out in agony as Vivi stumbled through the debris towards her frantic screams, finally finding her pinned under the immense table in the front room.
Pulling the table off her, and lifting Yvette into her arms – she was as light as a feather, Vivi carried her, both of them covered in brick dust and dirt, down into the cellar, where she tended to Yvette’s wounds.
The raid lasted for what felt like an eternity, and as the all-clear sounded, she knew she needed to go out and find someone to check over her young friend, who was in a great deal of pain. Venturing into the street, she was overwhelmed by the devastation that greeted her. The acrid smell of burning buildings rose above the city like a cloud, hanging heavy and choking its residents, with nothing to comfort them but the clanging bells of ambulances and fire engines as they scrambled to their destinations.
After more than an hour, Vivi gave up. It was impossible to get anyone; so many people were injured and in a far more critical state than Yvette. It was only when she started the long walk back to the house, that she remembered her wireless. Had she retrieved the antenna after she’d finished her broadcast? She had signed off, but was it still dangling there?
Vivi raced back through the city, stopping abruptly when she rounded the corner of the Renoirs’ road as her worst fears met her. Being marched out of the house by Nazis were Monsieur and Madame Renoir, who had evidently rushed home after the raid. These people who had taken such good care of her! Behind them, in a soldier’s arms, was her wireless.
She retreated into the shadows, turned around and ran. Should she turn herself in, tell the Germans it was her fault? That the family she lived with knew nothing of her activities? But her choking fear alongside the trauma of the attack muddled her thoughts. So instead she ran till she could no longer go on, hot breath racing through her lungs, her heart breaking. Eventually, she collapsed onto a chair at a table of a closed pavement café to gather herself.
She would have to go to the safe house.
She grappled to rake through her memories until, eventually, she remembered the name she needed. Boulogne. The house was in Boulogne Street.
Numb and overwhelmed, she forced her feet across town. Arriving at the right street, Vivi shuddered with the bitter cold and fear, but stopped abruptly when she sighted the number she had memorised. All the Resistance houses she’d encountered since she’d arrived so far had been inconspicuous, brown shabby doors down dark alleyways. However, this one was elaborate. It had a large oak door, painted vivid crimson with a light on over the top.
Exhausted, she knocked. Recalling the name, she muttered it to herself – ‘Madame Mazella’. That was the person she needed to identify.
Nothing could have prepared her for the character who flung open the door with force. Standing to meet her was a girl heavily made-up and wearing a low-cut dress with the majority of her cleavage visible.
Vivi stifled her reaction.
‘Yes?’ enquired the woman, frowning at Vivi as she looked her up and down.
‘Madame Mazella?’ Vivi enquired in a hushed tone.
‘She’s inside,’ the woman snapped.
As Vivi stepped in, it was as if she’d entered a different world. Outside was the war and madness; in here was sheer decadence. The hallway was lavishly decorated, a thick, colourful Turkish carpet, red and gold walls and heavy velvet curtains. The air was dense with the smell of stale tobacco and cheap perfume. From the hallway, a door was opened, revealing a parlour. A woman giggled, and a man passed by her, looking her up and down before he stepped outside beaming. Vivi felt thoroughly confused, this was not what she had expected. An older woman arrived, also in thick make-up with shiny red lips. Her hair was piled on top of her head, a crayoned beauty spot drawn on one cheek.