Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
LUCY
After having breakfast at Jojo’s, Lucy had felt a headache coming on. The summer heat had turned humid, and clouds swelled in the sky, stacking up one on top of the other and pressing down on Cordeval.
Lucy didn’t know what to do with herself. All she could do was wonder about ‘Isabelle’s Lullaby’ and why it’d been hidden inside Sébastien’s piano.
She sat in the flat with the windows open, trying to catch whatever breeze she could. Her phone buzzed into life with messages from Hannah and Natalie and she forgot about the oppressive heat for a moment as she swiped the screen.
Bonjour, Lucy! Thinking of you today!!! Natalie had written in their group chat, with a hug emoji.
Beneath it, Hannah had sent a love heart, before writing, I hope you’re surrounded by gorgeous French boys, red wine and chocolate! Actually, skip the first, stick with the booze and chocs! We miss you so much. Love you, Lu xxxxx.
Lucy replied with a row of heart emojis and I miss you too! Well, I *have* found a very nice French monsieur who makes amazing croissants! But I’m being good. Apart from the red wine and chocolates. ;) How’s London? It’s SO HOT here right now. Really humid. I think there’s going to be a storm!!
She could see that Natalie was typing, then her message sprang up on the screen. DREAM MAN! If you don’t want him, give him my number!! Srsly though glad you’re ok. We’re thinking of you over there in France!
Lucy tapped out some laughter emojis, then replied, Love you both! I’ll raise a glass of red to you later xxxx
She had only just pressed Send when her phone started to ring.
It was her dad. For a moment, she pictured him a few weeks ago as he practised his walk down the aisle with her across the living room carpet, his face lit up with a proud smile.
She swallowed back a sob and answered. ‘Dad? How’s things? ’
‘I’m supposed to ask you that,’ he replied. ‘How are you, darling? All right?’
‘It’s… it’s not the easiest of days,’ Lucy admitted. ‘But I’m surviving. Just been chatting to Hannah and Natalie.’
‘They’ve been absolute bricks,’ he told her. ‘They’ve taken care of so many bits that I would never have thought of. But Diana and I wanted to talk to you, because… well, we love you, Lu. We don’t like to think of you alone today.’
‘You know you can ring us whenever you like?’ Diana, her stepmum, said. Lucy could hear rustling in the background, and pictured them leaning over the phone together. ‘If you want us to come over, sweetheart, just say.’
‘You don’t have to drop everything for me,’ Lucy said. ‘I’m all right, really. It’s nice being here, staying in Mémé and Papi’s flat. I’d have a hard time in London – I’d just keep being reminded of… well…’
‘Cordeval’s a lovely place to be if you want to take a deep breath,’ her father said gently. ‘Get out into the sunshine, Lu, and forget it all for today.’
‘It’s building up to a storm out there at the moment!’ Lucy leaned back in her chair to see the dark clouds piling ever higher above the village. She caught sight of Sébastien looking up at the clouds, too, before starting to bring in the tables from outside the bar.
She told her dad, ‘The weirdest thing has happened. Do you remember that lullaby that Mémé used to sing? You’ll never guess where it’s turned up. On a screwed-up piece of paper inside the piano at Sébastien’s bar. He found it and played it for me – it says “Isabelle’s Lullaby” on it.’
Her father gave a soft laugh and said, ‘That sounds like something from a mystery to me. Maybe one for an ace journalist like you to solve?’
‘Maybe…’ Lucy glanced over at the memory box and the notebook. A photo of Margot in a garden somewhere lay on the table beside it; she was wearing the dress that Lucy had found in Mémé’s wardrobe. ‘There’s a lot of mysteries here. I’ll tell you all about them when I next see you.’
They chatted for a little while, and Lucy felt better, not so lost. Her life was full without a husband. She could return to her research now; she needed to find out what happened to Esther. She owed it to her great-grandmother’s friend not to look away, no matter how painful the truth was.
Lucy took Mémé’s magnifying glass, that she’d used when reading the newspaper, out of the drawer.
She focused on one day in the diary and, from the tiny letters, realised that she was looking at E RIP.
Another word followed it and Lucy squinted until the letters seemed to unfurl themselves to reveal the word poche. Pocket.
It seemed very odd to Lucy that Margot would record that her friend had died and then add a word like ‘pocket’.
She flicked through the pages, wondering if the word appeared again, but as she did, she realised that the back cover of the diary was thicker than the front.
She looked carefully at it and realised it was slightly concertinaed, and she remembered one of her own notebooks, which had a pocket at the back.
She was sure that was what she could see now, except the diary was so tightly bound that she couldn’t easily access it. She took a knife from Mémé’s kitchen and carefully worked at the pocket, until finally it opened. And inside it, she found a folded sheet of paper.
It was impossible to lay flat without risking tearing it, so Lucy read it as carefully as she could. She soon realised she was reading Margot’s own testimony. Lucy shivered; she was holding in her hands an eyewitness account.
And as soon as she read those fatal words and realised how Esther had died, Lucy was overcome with remorseless grief.
She shook with tears as she thought of Esther’s broken body lying on the flagstone floor, her blood pooling around her.
Her mind was swamped with cascading images: a baby in a basket, a bridal bouquet, her mother’s tiara, Mémé reading stories in her bookshop, and Esther. Poor Esther.
Thinking of tiny Isabelle, losing her mother when she was so young, picked at Lucy’s own scar. She, too, had lost a mother who she could barely remember. She cried even more.
She could have rung her friends, or her dad and her stepmum, but she knew she needed to let the feelings go.
As the afternoon wore on, she began to recover.
She wondered where Esther had been laid to rest; she’d ask Beatrice when she came back.
She wanted to pay her respects. She went down to the shop.
It was cooler down there than in the flat, and she was drawn to the wrapped book under the counter.
She brought it out, cradling it in her arms as she wept again.
Once she had no tears left to shed, Lucy put the book back under the counter. As she got to her feet, her attention was drawn to the shelves of books on the Second World War. She wanted some sort of context, to understand Esther’s death. What happened here, to the Jewish people of Normandy?
She put aside the photograph-filled books about D-Day, and instead found a book written in French about the occupation.
She took it to the book-nook and sat down among the cushions, then turned to the index.
Despite the closeness and heat of the day, as she ran her finger down the names she went cold.
She’d found the name: Lauterborn, Felix.
She turned to the page and began to read.
A key figure in Himmler’s entourage, Obergruppenführer Felix Lauterborn was entrusted with the administration of the Einsatzgruppen death squads.
A virulent anti-Semite since his youth, bank clerk Lauterborn leveraged his friendships with Himmler and Hitler to rise through the Nazi ranks. He became a trusted associate of Reinhard Heydrich, once described by Hitler as ‘the man with the iron heart.’
Lauterborn’s penchant for administration made him a vital figure in the architecture of the state terror machine; Heydrich credited his organisational skills with bringing Kristallnacht to fruition.
His murderous regime while commandant of the internment camp at Bergères-sur-Seine earned him the soubriquet ‘the Beast of Bergères-sur-Seine’.
She glanced round as a small motorbike puttered up the narrow road, and she thought of Fernand, waving from the window of the bar to Margot, and Esther walking past the shop with her baby in a pram. Lucy’s hands tensed against the book.
She went on reading, although the cloudy day had made the light gloomy, and found a quotation from a letter that Lauterborn had written to Heydrich:
I need not tell you that I am at your disposal in all matters relating to the final solution of the Jewish problem. I remain wholly and totally dedicated to this important initiative and am keen to begin our vital work in this regard.
The letter chilled her. It was so blandly businesslike. He may as well have been writing about someone cashing a cheque rather than the hate-fuelled slaughter of innocent human beings.
Then, on the opposite page, she saw Lauterborn’s photo; the long face, the scar carved down one cheek, the cold, hard eyes. The SS thunderbolt insignia stood out on his collar. His uniform was pinned with medals and badges, a man who’d been celebrated in his time for the evil he’d perpetrated.
Lucy snapped the book closed to cut off his cruel stare. As she returned it to the shelf, she heard an enormous crash from outside.
She’d been so immersed in the world of the occupation that her first thought – and she felt ridiculous for thinking it – was that a bomb had been dropped. But then she turned and saw huge, fat raindrops splashing against the pavement outside, and realised it was a storm.
She hurried upstairs to close the windows as a strong breeze blew in, bringing the rain with it. The thick clouds blended with the darkening evening and Lucy switched on the lights. The thunder crashed and rolled, coming nearer and nearer as flashes of lightning made her squint.
The rain hammered against the windows and Lucy wondered about the local fishermen, who would’ve been out in their boats.
But maybe they were sensible enough to have known what the stacking clouds were heralding and had come back to the harbour.
She jumped with each crash and growl of thunder. Then, suddenly, the lights went out.
Lucy shivered. The violence of the storm had unnerved her, and she didn’t know what to do in a power cut. She sat in the near-dark, which vanished for a second as another bolt of lightning flashed and lit up the whole room, before leaving her in the gloom again.
And then there was a knock at the door. Lucy started at the sound, her whole body growing tense.
‘Lucy!’ It was Sébastien’s voice. ‘Are you okay? There’s a flood coming in!’