Chapter 61
SIXTY-ONE
LUCY
The summer sun was beating down on the cemetery, the graves of Lucy’s family in front of her. Mémé and Papi rested between her parents; Esther and Daniel, Margot and Emil.
But still, she thought about the kind, gentle man, with a core of bravery that ran through him like steel.
‘After seeing the lullaby that he wrote down for Mémé, I just wonder what happened to Theo,’ she said, her gaze wandering from Sébastien to Beatrice.
‘Haven’t you guessed?’ Beatrice asked. She smiled at Lucy, her gaze twinkling with mischief. ‘Every story needs a happily ever after.’
Lucy looked over at her father. It was unlikely, but she asked anyway, ‘Dad, did you ever hear Margot or Emil mention Theo? He was a musician, and a resistance fighter. He’d lost his eye when he was a child.’
‘He’d—’ Philip looked to Lucy, then broke into a smile.
‘Grandpa Emil!’ he exclaimed. ‘He used to tell us different stories about how he’d lost the sight in that eye.
Sometimes he’d been a pirate and had lost it in a sword fight; once he told us that a speck of stardust had got in there on the night he met Grandma.
I never found out what had really happened, but every story was better than the last.’
Beatrice chuckled and asked, ‘And did you ever hear anyone play the piano so well?’
‘Never.’ Philip shook his head. ‘He could come up with the most beautiful melodies, just off the top of his head.’
‘So Mémé wasn’t the only one who changed their name.’ Lucy smiled. When she was only a baby, the man who had written the lullaby for Mémé had held her. ‘He was Theo all along!’
‘And they came home to Cordeval, together,’ said Beatrice tenderly.
Lucy felt as if she had come home too.
2026
Lucy said goodbye to her old life in London. She wound up her job at Glitz magazine, passing the baton to a young woman who, with her love of fashion and the written word, reminded Lucy of herself.
Settling into life in Cordeval and getting the bookshop ready to reopen had been harder than she had thought it would be, with her phone constantly ringing as notaries, builders and decorators kept finding things they needed to discuss with her.
Sébastien helped her through everything, with his laid-back humour, and, eventually, the bookshop reopened.
And if that hadn’t been enough, she’d taken on another project at the same time. She’d sat in a corner at Jojo’s in front of her laptop, working against the clock.
Once Lucy reopened the shop, the customers came in their droves.
She proudly displayed photographs of her family – of Margot outside the shop in the 1930s, of Mémé reading to a group of children in the 1960s.
Emil – or Theo as she now knew he’d once been – on the beach, laughing brightly with a crowd of friends.
And there was a photograph of Daniel and Esther, too, standing outside their cottage.
Locals were so pleased to see the bookshop open again, and with Arielle’s granddaughter at the helm.
Battlefield tourists included it their visits, coming to see the shop and the cellar, survivors from when France had been under occupation.
Lucy had devoted a shelf to a display of the banned books that she had found in the storeroom and the basement. They could stand openly in a row on the shelf now, as they would never have done during the occupation, so that customers could carefully leaf through their pages.
The revived book club was going from strength to strength.
It brought in people who loved books, as well as people who wanted to absorb the history.
And that night, it was a very special book club meeting.
From behind the old brass till, Lucy thought back to her failed attempt at running a book club in London; how things had changed.
The bookshop was buzzing with people, and Galette was busily trotting from group to group, his tail wagging as he greeted everyone. From upstairs, she could hear the clink of plates and cutlery from Margot’s café.
The café did a roaring business on the first floor, with locals and visitors devouring Sébastien’s cakes and pastries as the photographs of Cordeval residents past looked down at them from the walls.
Lucy had turned the top floor where Theo had once lived into a single flat that was now her home.
There was no piano up there now, but Sébastien was a frequent visitor.
‘This is going to be one of those nights Cordeval remembers.’ Sébastian slipped his arm round Lucy’s waist and drew her close. ‘Another chapter in the story.’
Lucy kissed his cheek and breathed in the comforting scent of his cologne.
She hadn’t expected to find love again so soon, but they were taking it slowly.
One day, maybe she’d move in with him and live in the cottage that her great-grandparents had once called home.
But for now, they were happy meeting on dates and bumping into each other between the café and the bookshop.
‘So many people are here, it’s amazing!’ Lucy said, as she glanced at the crowd.
There were locals from Cordeval who had become her friends, and her old friends Hannah and Natalie from London, along with Philip and Diana.
Even Polly had come from London, and she was going to write about it in the magazine.
‘I’m so glad you’ve helped me, Sébastien; you’ve been my rock.
There’s been so many times when I thought we’d never get here – but we have! ’
‘I never doubted you for a moment,’ he assured her. ‘You come from a long line of women who get stuff done. Look at this place, it’s amazing!’
Lucy had tracked down an expert from Paris to revive the wooden shelves and had managed to bring them back to how they must’ve looked when Margot first opened Les Pages d’Espoir in the 1930s.
The ladders, which reached up to the top shelves, had been mended and no longer wobbled as Lucy climbed them.
The book-nook had new cushions, some covered in reproduction 1930s fabric and others with classic book covers printed on them.
A local carpenter who had been friends with Papi fixed the story-chair that he’d painted for Mémé.
Lucy replaced the beanbags with new ones in colourful prints and added fabric-covered foam in geometric shapes that toddlers spent hours clambering over.
A glazier made sure the stained glass in the front door was secure in new lead, and Lucy had new lighting put in that shone cosily through the shop.
Lucy’s uncle and cousins had come from Lyon to see the shop and hear the truth about the family, and so did her father’s cousins, the children of Mémé’s younger brother.
None of them had ever known the truth, as Mémé had kept it to herself until she had decided that there were stories that needed to be told before it was too late.
‘I sometimes imagine Margot walking through here,’ Lucy admitted to Sébastien.
She always pictured her in the 1940s dress that she’d found in Mémé’s wardrobe.
‘I think she’d like it. And I think, too, that she’d be pleased you’ve helped me get it looking so nice – seeing as your grandma and your great-grandma took care of the shop when she had to go away. ’
Sébastien dotted a kiss to Lucy’s cheek and teased, ‘I guess we were just meant to be!’
When it was time for the book club to start, Lucy and Sébastien shepherded everyone through the storeroom and to the stairs that led down to the cellar. Lucy peered down after the last guest and whispered to him, ‘There’s not enough chairs. They’re having to sit on the steps!’
‘I’m so proud of you,’ Sébastien said. ‘And when you’re done reading, there’ll be a feast waiting for you and all your fans.
You dad hasn’t stopped complaining that it’s women only at the book club.
I reckon he might be after a book club for the boys too.
’ He kissed her softly on the lips. ‘I love you.’
Lucy chuckled before kissing him in return. ‘I love you, too. You’re the best boyfriend a girl could ever have.’ She brushed the tip of her nose against his and teased, ‘And your baked Camembert is to die for!’
‘There are a fair few remarkable people looking down on you tonight,’ he said, beaming.
Lucy thought again of the first bookshop members, of Margot and Emil, of Daniel and Esther and, of course, of Arielle, whose beloved cuddly toys sat in pride of place on her cosy bed upstairs.
‘And they’re more proud than any of us.’
‘And everyone will know their stories now,’ Lucy said. She gave Sébastien one last kiss on his cheek. ‘Wish me luck!’
Lucy pushed open the door into the candlelit cellar and was met with a round of applause.
Beatrice rose to her feet in a standing ovation and as one the other members of her audience joined in.
Once the secret gathering in the cellar had been conducted in whispers, but now that secret had been shared with the world.
Theo’s piano now lived in the café upstairs, and as Lucy carefully made her way down the cellar steps, between the friends and new faces who had been waiting for her, she heard the piano spring into life.
Sébastien was playing the lullaby that Theo had written for Mémé so many years before, and Lucy swallowed back a sob that threatened to break free.
She reached the chair that had been left for her and picked up the book that they’d be reading that night. She couldn’t quite believe that it was real, but her name was on the cover to prove it.
Not only had she spent the past year opening her new business and finding her way in her new life, but she’d been writing a book, too.
All those secret histories that had found their way to her needed to be told; all those tangled pieces of the puzzle that she unteased to discover her family’s secrets.
Between the pages of the book – pages of hope – was the story of the Resistance Book Club.