Chapter Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Bella arrived back at Villa Rosa, there was a note on the mantelpiece. Celestine had felt tired and had gone to bed early. The pang of guilt was inescapable. Bella was here to help her aunt, and somehow, she kept forgetting that. Perhaps not even forgetting but deliberately ignoring her responsibility. Celestine would have said otherwise, but it didn’t stop Bella from feeling it. It was even worse when she went into the kitchen and saw that her aunt had left a wrapped salad and some ham for her on the table. Had Bella neglected to tell Celestine she’d be eating out with Rory? Now that she thought back, she couldn’t be sure. It took all her strength not to go and wake her and apologise for being such a terrible niece.
But even as those thoughts ran through her head, they were nudged aside by thoughts of Rory. She’d had such a great evening with him, and even as he’d left her – respectful as always to her insistence that she wasn’t looking for romance – there had been a look in his eyes that she couldn’t mistake. He liked her. She’d told herself not to be silly, that she was out of practice reading the signals, but she couldn’t ignore what she could see in front of her face. And the truth was, she liked him too. She liked him a lot. She couldn’t honestly say whether there was an element of rebound, and that scared her, but it was useless telling her illogical emotions to behave. She liked him more every time she saw him. To ask for more was the most foolish thing she could do, and yet she wanted it.
The image of them kissing would cross her mind, and she would struggle to shake it. Her thoughts would wander to how his lips might feel, how his fingers might skim her back, how his hair would be if she plunged her hands into it, and she wouldn’t even realise she’d been daydreaming until something snapped her back to reality. She wondered if he was doing the same about her. She wished it, even as she told herself not to be stupid.
Not wanting to make too much noise while her aunt was in bed, Bella spent some time searching online for make-up tips to complete her 1940s look for the Liberation Day celebrations. But her mind kept going back to Rory, and then to things Rory did or said, and then to his quest, the thing that had brought him to Jersey in the first place. How strange it was that his search was connected to her aunt, almost as if it was meant to bring them together. Silly, but strange, nonetheless. It was a coincidence she found hard to ignore.
Hating herself for doing it, she went to the cupboard where Celestine’s photo albums were stored and took them out. After a few minutes of flicking through, she found the one containing the old pictures of Violette that Celestine hadn’t wanted to talk about.
‘She was gorgeous,’ she murmured, forgetting for a second that there was no one to hear her. It was easy to imagine this wide-eyed, raven-haired girl with her tiny waist and slender arms would draw the attention of any passing soldier. She’d have caught the attention of any red-blooded male. Her sister, Anais, was lovely too, but in a much more awkward way. And there was Dolly, chubby but cute, and her uncle Roland, young and gangly, but every bit as dour-looking as the man Bella remembered growing up with. How he and sunny Celestine had ended up together was still a mystery.
What had Violette been like? she wondered. She looked as if she’d be feisty, like Cathy in Wuthering Heights , all wind-torn and wild romance. She looked rebellious. Bella wished she could hear more, and it made her sad to think about what might have split her from Celestine. It must have been something very bad to make Celestine clam up every time Violette was mentioned.
Bella turned the page and there were more photographs. She was surprised to see so many – she might have imagined there wouldn’t have been much opportunity for photography during the occupation. Perhaps these had been taken before then. But the group looked too old to be much before the war, and afterwards they hadn’t been friends. It was just another mystery that Bella was unlikely to solve as long as Celestine was determined not to speak about it.
As she turned again, one of the photographs fell out of the book. Against the backdrop of the beach, not too far from where the flower stall now stood, posed Violette, Anais and Celestine. They looked like they’d been laughing at something: Celestine grinning, Violette with her hands over her mouth mid-giggle and Anais with her head thrown back. As Bella tried to fix it back into the album, she noticed something written on the back. There was a date: May 1944. So it was a year before the occupation of Jersey ended. Who’d taken it? Where had they got the camera? At the tunnel museum she’d read about the ban on radios and anything else that might enable the islanders to pass on information on the Germans to the Allies, so it seemed unlikely anyone had photography equipment either.
And then there was the writing. French? It was like no French Bella knew, but then she realised it had to be Jèrriais, the old language of Jersey. Hadn’t she read somewhere how it had been widely used during the war to send notes that couldn’t be translated so easily if they’d fallen into German hands? But surely there was nothing of significance here? She’d heard Celestine use it before, of course. She supposed they must have spoken it all the time back then, just because they all knew it. Still, she wanted to know what it said.
Taking out her phone, she searched for a translation site. She had to dig deep, but eventually she found one and typed in the first sentence. It took a minute or two to get the odd spellings, and she wasn’t entirely convinced by the translation once she’d got one, but it seemed like it might be about right.
Friends and sisters. On pain of death we will keep our secret.
Bella frowned at the words on her phone. What the hell did that mean? Who’d written it? She couldn’t imagine Celestine writing something like that. The photo had been given to Celestine by one of the others, perhaps? It had obviously been taken by someone else. Who? Was it a reminder to Celestine of something she needed to do?
Bella read the rest of the message, but it seemed like it was just a confirmation of the location the photo had been taken and the full names of all three girls.
On pain of death we will keep our secret . Bella wanted more than anything to ask Celestine what that meant. The photo had been taken so long ago, would she even remember? Bella felt sure that whatever the secret might be, it was big enough that she would. Surely that would be one explanation for why Celestine clammed up every time Violette was mentioned. Even with the warning, had Celestine broken their trust?
After another look at the photos, Bella’s mind was racing so fast she was certain she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She put the album away and went to bed anyway.
As she’d feared, it had taken another two hours for Bella to drop off. She’d been kept awake going over and over what she’d learned and how it might fit with theories she was steadily forming about Celestine’s friendship with Violette and how it might be linked to Rory’s search. The more she went over it, the crazier the notion that there was any connection at all seemed. And yet there was no other explanation. Celestine had been trusted with a secret. And then Violette had broken all ties, shortly before she’d gone off to the mainland for a few months. What on earth had Celestine done?