Chapter 21 #2
Lucy put the dress back in the wardrobe.
She could understand why Mémé had wanted to keep Papi’s hat and Margot’s dress.
It kept a part of them with her, just as choosing to stay in her grandparents’ old flat, making coffee and tea on their stove, was Lucy’s way of keeping close to them now, even though they’d gone.
She made up the bed in the guest room, where she used to sleep. It was comforting to be there again.
Over the next few days, Lucy enjoyed falling into a new routine. London felt very far away, even though Polly emailed her to ask her if she’d made up her mind yet about the offer.
She bought her baguette and croissant from the bakery each morning, and went to the fromagerie to buy cheese for her lunch. Then she was set up for the day, ready to work through the box of memories.
The notebook had been helpful, introducing Lucy to the book club and their world, but some of it was vague.
When she had skipped towards the end, she read, Maman told me about a bonfire and an air raid, then there was a long, tantalising gap before Mémé wrote fondly about the birth of her brother, Etienne, after the war.
The notebook was useful as a frame, so that Lucy could slot the other documents into the gaps, but it was slow work.
Not everything was dated and it was hard to know what fitted in where, or even who had written things.
At least she now knew why Sylvie’s business card had been kept – because she’d been one of the club members.
And perhaps the presence of a napkin that flaked away into almost nothing when Lucy touched it made sense now as well; another club member, Madame Guerin, had worked at the café on the square whose name was printed on it.
She found a small notebook with flowers on the cover, which was filled with Margot’s handwriting, and was all about Esther.
Everything recorded in it was a happy memory; how kind and funny she was, and how skilled she was as at embroidery.
They were anecdotes from Margot and the other members of the book club, but nothing sad had been written in those pages, and nothing hinted at what had happened to Esther.
But the fact that it had been created in the first place made Lucy wonder; it read like a tribute.
At one point, Lucy had carefully stacked the photos on the table, only for a sudden gust of wind to come in through the window and send them flying.
She’d gone crawling around the floor to retrieve them, then had to sort them all over again.
But this time she kept the window shut, even though she had to fan herself against the summer heat.
She found loose paper where Margot had evidently been reusing old sheets.
On it she had recorded the titles of books, mainly in French but, which surprised Lucy, sometimes in English.
On the reverse, she’d found memories written down: the sight of the air battle above Cordeval and how she’d thought Theo’s cottage had been destroyed, her visit to the burnt-out ruins, how she had felt witnessing a bonfire of books, and her fears for her friends.
On one sheet, Lucy found a short but moving note about watching over Isabelle as she slept in her basket, clutching her toys close to her; a goose and a teddy.
She did her best, but struggled at times to work out where each reminiscence fitted into the outline provided by Mémé and Beatrice’s notebook.
Hours passed as she carefully transcribed a sheaf of letters, only to realise that they had been written between Margot and her first husband, Serge, back when they were courting.
They didn’t have any bearing on what’d happened during the war, although Lucy was so glad that Mémé had kept them.
She’d never known that Margot had been a widow when she’d met Emil, and it gave her an insight into Margot’s personality; she was affectionate and determined in equal amounts.
And the letters mentioned other people in Cordeval, before the Germans arrived and changed everything; she especially wrote about her friendship with Esther.
They’d been so close, and Lucy’s thoughts returned to the book under the counter.
But she couldn’t open it. Not now, not after so long.
She’d challenged herself to decipher Margot’s diary.
The initials began to make sense; they were often people’s names, or places.
CSM was Clarenville-sur-Mer. Sometimes there was a record of MG coming into the shop for a book and a chat, and that had to be Madame Guerin.
B was obvious, as Margot recorded one of Beatrice’s exploits, often accompanied by several exclamation marks.
But still, there was much in the diary that was opaque, and Lucy groaned with frustration when she found only an asterisk for the day recorded on the plaque in the square.
And not long after it, just a large capital A.
Lucy knew she’d have to keep referring back to it as she made more and more inroads into the other documents in the box, as they would shed light on it.