Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
LUCY
Lucy was down in the cellar, sorting through the crates and boxes.
She felt she had a good grasp of what’d happened from the items she’d found in the memory box, but she wanted to be sure that she’d covered everything.
As she looked through the photographs of old Cordeval, and the plans, an old, yellowed sheet of paper fell to the flagstoned floor.
It’d been inside the folds of one of the hiking maps, and Lucy picked up. It was just a list of names, ones she hadn’t recognised from the box. Apart from one: Madame Chantal Guerin.
She read the list through several times, as a thought brewed in her mind. It could be a coincidence, but Beatrice had said that one of the book club had been executed in the square, and the memorial made it clear that she wasn’t the only person to have been publicly murdered in cold blood that day.
Lucy left the shop and went down to the square, looking up at the plaque again as if it would yield the answer.
But as she stood there, she was distracted by a couple coming out of the town hall with a newborn in a pram.
It made her think of Isabelle. They must’ve been registering the birth, and Lucy smiled to see the couple look so happy.
Then she went into the town hall, across the marble floor and up to the reception desk, where an older man with a beard and glasses sat. No one could be born or die in Cordeval without it being recorded in the registers here by the clerk.
‘Bonjour. I’m Lucy – Arielle Pascal’s granddaughter.
I’m doing some research she left behind,’ Lucy began.
‘I know this might seem like a strange question, and you might not be able to answer it, but I found this list of names, and I just wondered… could they be connected with the executions in the square?’
Her stomach flipped with anticipation as she slid the list of names over the counter to him.
He peered down his nose at the list and his eyes widened.
‘Ah, our brave heroes!’ he said, his sombre expression suddenly brightening. He tapped his fingertip to the page. ‘You’ve seen our plaque, of course?’
‘Yes.’ Lucy nodded. She pictured Margot smiling proudly at the clerk’s words. ‘Beatrice showed it to me. I don’t suppose I could get a copy of Madame Guerin’s death certificate? It’d be really helpful for my research.’
The clerk nodded. ‘Give me five minutes,’ he said, picking up the piece of paper. Then he stood and opened a closed door behind the desk. Humming a tune, he disappeared into the building.
Lucy tapped her fingertips on the desk as she waited. A warm sea breeze came in through the propped-open door and ruffled the tricolour that hung beside the old bust of Marianne near the entrance.
Eventually, the clerk returned. Not just with a certificate, but with a large, leatherbound book.
He laid it on the desk with great care and opened it to a page full of names, and Lucy realised this was where he copied the certificates from.
She ran her gaze down the page and recognised the names from the list she’d found in the basement.
And they all had died on the same day: 14 November 1941.
An icy shiver ran down her spine. ‘This is them, isn’t it? All the heroes on the list.’
The man nodded. ‘They were fearless,’ he said. ‘They knew what they were risking, but they resisted all the same.’
‘What’s that… mort accidentelle?’ Lucy pointed to the cause of death beside Madame Guerin’s name. ‘Why does it say that when it wasn’t an accident?’
‘Because it looked better in the records,’ he explained.
‘The town’s mayor at the time was an enthusiastic collaborator.
It wouldn’t do for him to be letting the Nazis execute his own citizens, so the records were fudged accordingly.
The Germans didn’t complain either; it preserved the illusion of a peaceful occupation. ’
No wonder Mémé had wanted her to write down the town’s story. The truth needed to be told, even when the official record veered away from it.
Lucy thanked the clerk, and left the town hall with Madame Guerin’s certificate.
She bought a bunch of peach and white roses from the florist’s on the square, then walked towards the plaque, her steps unsteady with the force of her emotion.
She laid the bouquet on the ground beneath the plaque and through eyes blurred with tears, looked up at it.
All those names, all those lives so brutally ended.
But people remembered them, and she would do what she could too to ensure they weren’t forgotten.
Lucy went back to the bookshop. She had other things to resolve beyond her research. First of all, she rang Polly. It was odd thinking about her boss in the shiny office in London, while Lucy was surrounded by old wooden shelves full of books.
‘Lucy, hi,’ Polly said. ‘I have got literally less than five minutes before I have to run for a New York flight. What’s up?’
‘I’ve made my decision,’ Lucy told her. She pictured Polly’s designer luggage, ready to go to Heathrow, and she was surprised when she didn’t feel a pang of envy for her hectic, jet-set lifestyle. ‘I’m turning down your very kind offer. And in fact… I’m resigning. I’m going to move to France.’
The words were out of her mouth now, and she couldn’t unsay them. But she wasn’t scared. Instead, she was fizzing with excitement for her new life.
‘I knew this would bloody happen, the second I told you to find a hot Frenchman.’ Polly sighed. ‘Lucy, you are a frankly massive loss to the world of fashion journalism, God help us. I’m gutted!’
‘Oh, Polly! You’ve been the best boss I could’ve asked for, but there’s someone waiting out there who deserves a chance and will be a brilliant editor in chief. And any time you want to get away from it all in France, you just let me know!’
‘Oh, you can bet on it!’ Polly laughed. ‘And put your decision in writing when you can tear yourself away from Monsieur Gorgeous, so we can make it all official. Be well, you little stinker!’
Lucy laughed too. She’d miss Polly and her whirlwind energy, and her determined ambition, but she knew she was making the right choice.
Lucy ended the call, dreading the next call she had to make.
She moved to stand in front of a set of shelves bursting with books and ornaments chosen by Mémé, before taking a steadying breath and pressing the button to call her dad.
The video call’s ringtone sang out jauntily in the otherwise empty shop as she waited for him to answer.
She’d been rehearsing this conversation in her head, but now all those words evaporated.
‘Lucy-Lu!’ her father exclaimed brightly as the screen blinked into life. ‘How’s life in the French boondocks, darling?’
The French boondocks? Lucy could already sense that this conversation wasn’t going to go well.
‘Oh, it’s just great, Dad!’ she replied with a bright smile.
‘I’ve been finding out so much about Cordeval – honestly, Great-Grandma Margot was an astonishing woman.
I had no idea! You know she ran a book club during the occupation, reading all the books the Nazis tried to ban?
And then they were circulating maps, and hiding a baby…
it’s just amazing.’ Realising that her words had all come out in an excitable rush, she stopped and said, ‘How are you? How’s London? ’
‘London’s as London as London ever is,’ he replied.
‘Loobs, I’ve had to do some serious schmoozing on your behalf.
Your chief exec got me in a corner at Covent Garden this weekend and demanded a status report on his AWOL editor.
I’ve got to have him in my box for Turandot next month, just to keep him sweet. Are you coming home soon?’
Lucy bit her lip. ‘Dad, that’s really kind of you, but don’t worry, I’ll get on the phone to him right away,’ she told him. Her father always stepped in and tried to help her, because, she knew, to him she’d always be the little girl he needed to protect.
‘Ah, Di said something about you being a grown-up these days,’ he said with a smile. ‘You know what dads are like for interfering!’
Lucy chuckled. ‘Dad… this isn’t easy for me to say,’ she went on.
She could see the shelves of the study behind him, full of classic novels, works of philosophy, family photos.
There was a piece of pottery that she’d made for him when she was five, and he’d carried it everywhere even though it was an undefined lump of clay painted in garish colours.
And beside them, two worn, much-loved little toys that he’d had all his life – a white bird with a yellow beak, and a teddy with a tartan bowtie.
‘Dad…’ Lucy’s mouth was dry. He’d done so much for her through the years, and wanted only the best. But she knew what was in her heart. ‘I want to stay in Cordeval and run the shop.’
Her father frowned, then leaned a little closer to the screen, as though he thought he might have misheard. After a moment he said, ‘Right. I thought you just said you want to run a bookshop in France. You didn’t say that, did you?’
Lucy was glad that she wasn’t in the same room as her father right now, nor even in the same country. She could see her face turning red in the corner of the screen and it felt as if a stone had plummeted in her stomach.
‘Actually, Dad… I did,’ she replied. She sounded like she had when her father caught her when she was little, reading a book under the bedcovers with a torch after lights-out. ‘I want to run Mémé’s shop.’
‘Right,’ he said again. ‘Okay. So, I know, when we lost your mum, that you needed your books to cope with that. I remember that you seemed to always have your nose in a novel, all through that time; we both needed it, all those stories when I put you to bed. I know what books have always meant to you. And I know that was really important to you then, but… Lucy, you’ve got a career now. Keep the books for your downtime—’
‘I’m sorry, Dad, but no,’ Lucy cut in. ‘I love books, I love writing. And the shop is wonderful. Mémé left it to me for a reason; I think she knew I wasn’t happy in London, even though I hadn’t realised it myself.’
He let out a long sigh and murmured, ‘This is exactly what Diana said would happen.’ There was a little hint of promise in that though, because the one person Lucy’s father would bow to was her stepmother.
If Diana had her back, then there was every chance he could be talked round too.
‘I worry about you Lucy; you and I were always a team, weren’t we?
I just want you to be happy and… promise me you’ll think really, really carefully about this?
Smooth things over with work, get yourself some thinking time and don’t jump into it. Will you at least do that?’
Lucy nodded. ‘I have been thinking about it, Dad. This is what I want to do. I know you want the best for me, but this shop is amazing. And Cordeval – what a place! All that fresh air, and the sea, and the sand, and the people…’ Sébastien drifted before her mind’s eye and she swallowed.
Then Lucy stopped. Her gaze had wandered to the bookshelves behind her father again and the soft toys that were displayed there. The bird wasn’t just any bird – it looked a lot like a goose. And was that bear Herr Knuddel?
She gasped in amazement. What on earth were Isabelle’s toys doing in her dad’s house?