Page 36 of The Resistance Book Club

Margot stayed exactly where she was, her arm cramping from the weight of the hatch. She waited and waited until shecould no longer hear any sound from outside. No footsteps, no engines.

When she was sure they’d gone, she lifted the hatch and climbed out, then went over to the crumpled body of her friend. She drew Esther towards her and held her. Her body was still warm. All the tension and fear inside her poured out in racking sobs and Margot’s tears blended with Esther’s blood.

‘Oh, Esther…’ she sobbed. ‘I’m so sorry…’

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there on the hard, stone floor, but eventually she laid Esther down and drew her eyelids shut.

Fighting back her tears, Margot quickly rounded up Esther’s things – the bag she’d been packing for herself and Isabelle. A few clothes, some milk and bread, Isabelle’s bottle. She folded the nappies that had been drying on a frame by the kitchen range and put them in the bag. In the sitting room, she grabbed a photo of Esther’s parents, and another of Esther and Daniel on their wedding day.

All the while, she kept listening out for the sound of engines, footsteps, voices.

Once she’d gathered everything up, she came back to the hallway where Esther was lying. She knelt down and stroked her cold cheek.

‘I’ll look after Isabelle,’ Margot whispered. ‘I promise, Esther. And one day, I’ll tell her all about you, and I know she’ll be as proud of you as I am. I love you, Esther…goodbye.’

TWENTY-THREE

LUCY

2025

As Lucy drank her morning coffee, she looked down on the street from the window of Mémé’s flat with tears in her eyes. Sébastien and Galette were a blur as they came back from a run. They glowed in the golden summer sunlight, but Lucy didn’t feel touched by the sun at all.

Today would’ve been her wedding day.

Today, she would’ve woken up in a suite at the Dorchester with Hannah and Natalie, and a team of hairdressers and make-up artists would’ve got them all ready for the wedding. Lucy would’ve worn her beautiful cream silk dress with a train, and the veil and tiara her mother had worn on her wedding day. She would’ve walked under an arch of flowers and down the aisle on her dad’s arm, towards the man waiting at the altar rails with the vicar.

The man she’d loved: the man who’d shattered her heart.

She put her coffee bowl down on the dining table and picked up the piece of paper she’d left there the night before. She’d found it in the box that Mémé and Beatrice had puttogether for her, the thin sheet of paper covered in dots. She couldn’t make any sense out of it. At first, she’d thought it was a join-the-dots puzzle that she’d left behind here when she was a child, but it couldn’t have been that; it had no numbers and it was entirely hand-drawn.

She looked over a letter that had been written to Margot from a publisher in Paris, telling her the book she’d ordered the week before couldn’t be sent out because it’d since been banned. It was hard to imagine the frustration and constant stress of trying to live day to day while the Nazis controlled everything, even the books people read.

Her glance wandered to the notebook and Margot’s diary, next to her laptop.

She couldn’t go on with the story. She’d read about the Germans rounding people up, first in Mémé’s handwriting as she recalled what Margot had told her, and then in Beatrice’s script, recording what she’d witnessed. An ominous gap followed. Then she’d gone to Margot’s diary and seen anEfor Esther. If she was patient and concentrated, Lucy knew she could tease out some meaning from the initials and abbreviations in her tiny writing. But theEhaunted her. She kept thinking of the book downstairs, under the counter, wrapped in an old newspaper and addressed to Esther. There had to be a reason why she’d never collected the book, and Lucy suspected she had been rounded up.

She felt too fragile today of all days to go on with her research.

It was getting stuffy in the lounge, so she pulled up one of the sash windows that overlooked the street. Sébastien was outside Jojo’s, setting up for the day. He pulled out the awning, so that it cast a welcome shadow across the pavement, and unstacked chairs and tables. His dark hair was wet, as if he’d just got out of the shower.

Lucy waved hello, suddenly awkward in case he thoughtshe’d been staring at him. He looked at her for a second, then waved in reply, before cupping his hands to his mouth and calling up to her, ‘Fresh pastries for breakfast, five minutes?’

She would’ve been drinking champagne in London right now, just a little glass as her hair was styled for her mother’s tiara. She’d— Lucy pushed the thought away. There was no point dwelling on what couldn’t be.

‘Morning, Sébastien. I’d love some!’ she called back. ‘I’ll be down in a second!’

She ran a comb through her hair, roughly pulled it back in a clip and brushed the lightest layer of foundation onto her face. Then she wandered down to Jojo’s in her trainers. Her high heels hadn’t gone far lately, and her large make-up bag wasn’t getting much use.

She headed into the bar and saw that Sébastien had laid a table with coffee and pastries. Lucy grinned as she noticed a pot of what looked like his home-made jam.

‘Perfect!’ she said. She thought of Margot, then, and how long she must’ve gone during the war without seeing a spread as delicious as this.

‘Well, I was out of order on the beach last week,’ Sébastien said, as Galette wandered over to Lucy, his tail wagging lazily. ‘Besides, I wanted to talk a bit of business with you and that’s always better over pastries.’

‘Business?’ Lucy asked him, as she sat down at the table. It had to be about the bookshop. ‘Don’t worry about last week. I was so rude to you. If you’d rather live here than in Paris, why not? And I’ve eaten here every evening since I’ve been in Cordeval, and your food is just delicious. It’s better than you’d find at a lot of swanky restaurants in London or Paris.’

Sébastien murmured a thank-you that sounded a little bashful to Lucy. He pulled out a seat and joined her at the table. ‘When you put the shop on the market…would you give me a nod? I’d like to get an earlyoffer on the table.’