Page 62 of The Resistance Book Club

Theo nodded. He murmured, ‘She’s a lovely presence, isn’t she? That powdery scent babies have; it reminds me of my Lotte. Sometimes the loneliness is overwhelming, don’t you find?’

‘It’s unbearable,’ Margot replied, her words fighting through the weight of her unshed tears. She let them into the flat, then looked up at Theo; at his good eye, at his neatly trimmed moustache, at the gentle friendliness and deep warmth she saw in him. She said, as if she’d only just fully realised for herself, ‘But since you’ve been here, I haven’t felt it.’

‘I enjoy our evenings,’ Theo replied. ‘It’s nice to spend time with someone.’ Then he tutted. ‘No. With you. It’s nice to spend time with you.’

For the first time in years – since Serge had last held her hand by the harbour wall so long ago – Margot’s heart fluttered.

‘Oh, Theo…I feel the same way.’ She still hadIsabelle in her arms, but she leaned her head against his shoulder. Although she wasn’t sure she should, it felt right. ‘I’ll miss Isabelle so much, and I know you will too. But you’ll still be here, won’t you?’

Theo nodded. ‘I promise,’ he said. But they both knew that neither of them could keep a promise like that, not with the danger that stalked the streets of the once-sleepy little fishing village that was their home.

Margot saw the warmth of love in his gaze. She felt so drawn to him that she brushed her lips gently against his and gave him the softest kiss; a kiss to seal an impossible promise.

FORTY-ONE

LUCY

2025

After ending the call with her father, Lucy had gone upstairs to the flat to lose herself in the memory box again. She loved her father and knew he’d gone above and beyond to fight her corner. Now she was giving up everything he’d wanted for her. But she needed to walk her own path.

She looked at Margot’s diary again, staring at the asterisk on the date of the executions as if it would suddenly reveal its secret, or jog her thoughts. But nothing came to her, and her gaze moved on. It looked like a slightly bent circle had been drawn round one of the dates not long after the execution. Lucy fixed her attention on it, and it slowly resolved into a heart.

She wondered if this signified when Margot had met Emil, who Lucy knew she married not long after the events of 1941. But she hadn’t seen his name get a mention yet. The diary had been tightly bound and Lucy winced as she opened it a little further. The spine creaked in protest, but then in the join she spotted dark, dry specks. Carefully, she tipped them out onto a blank sheet of paper, and, as she carefully ran Mémé’smagnifying glass over them, she realised she was looking at dried purple petals.

Lucy had absorbed so much information from the memory box that she couldn’t at once alight on the significance, but she knew there was something. She looked again at Margot’s description of Theo’s cottage after the plane crash, and shivered as she read the words again.

Margot had picked a flower on her way to the ruined cottage, and had left it on his desk as a tribute, not realising he had survived. The flower had purple blooms.

The heart drawn round the date, and the remains of the dried flower, spoke to Lucy from the past. Margot and Theo had enjoyed a romance. Albeit fleeting. Lucy dreaded finding out what happened to Theo, who seemed like such a gentle, kind man.

One of the envelopes in the box contained letters in Margot’s handwriting. They were short and lacked dates and addresses, and were only addressed toMon cheri. Lucy hadn’t paid much attention to them before, as she’d thought they were letters to Serge and she’d already read through a heap of those. But now she sat down to read them properly, she realised they must’ve been written to Theo. Margot talked about how much she missed him and hoped to see him again soon, and how she liked to listen to music on the radio and think that, wherever he was, he was listening to the same tune. Lucy struggled with how tightly Margot had written her words, to make the most of a short supply of paper, but bit by bit she worked through the letters.

There was a reference in one sentence, which Lucy nearly missed as it seemed to be about music again, to ‘finding the meaning in the notes’. Lucy read carefully:matching up the key…tracing the dots…finding the letters…

It sounded like Margot was talking about a code. Lucy was surprised at first, but then, she thoughtthe book club were resisting the Germans. It wasn’t so odd that they would be dealing with encoded messages as well. Lucy remembered something in the memory box that hadn’t made any sense when she’d first found it.

She carefully worked through the photographs and letters until she found it, and held it up to the strong summer light streaming through the window. A sheet of tracing paper, covered in dots.

She ran downstairs holding the tracing paper, along with the letter and Theo’s handwritten lullaby for Isabelle, and headed out into the warm, sunshine-filled street. As she reached Jojo’s bar she almost fell over Galette, who had come to meet her.

Lucy paused to fuss the dog. ‘Where’s your dad, Galette? I’ve got something to show him!’

‘I was just coming to knock on your door!’ Sébastien said as he stepped out of the bar into the sunshine. ‘I’ve just finished tonight’s special and need someone to sample the vichyssoise. Galette volunteered, but…well, he likes everything!’

He looked delightfully rumpled from the kitchen, his hair a tousled mop. He had the beginnings of stubble on his chin.

‘I’d love to try it,’ Lucy replied eagerly. Then she told him, ‘I’ve just been reading the notebook, and I finally realised something. Look at this!’ She held the sheet of marked tracing paper up to Sébastien, who must’ve thought she’d gone mad, and then showed him the sheet music of the lullaby. ‘They used this sheet of paper to crack code hidden in music!’

Sébastien looked at the tracing paper, then at the sheet music, his eyes sparkling. ‘So go on…what does the lullaby say?’

‘Lauterborn’s a rotten old bastard, maybe?’ Lucy joked. She’d kept him up to date with everything she’d found out, but now she was thinking about Margot and Theo’s kiss, and it made her blush to look at Sébastien.

On the nearest table, she laid the tracing paper over thehandwritten lullaby, and saw that the dots on the paper aligned with Theo’s musical notes. ‘Oh, Sébastien, look – it works! Although I don’t know what it says. We’d have to sit down together and figure it out.’

Sébastien glanced back into the bar, where Anouk was polishing glasses. She gave a mischievous wave.

‘So we sit down with some food and a glass of wine and wrap our heads around it,’ he suggested. ‘I’ve got an hour right now if you have?’