Page 99 of Daughters of Paris

Sébastien held a hand out, lowered it, turned away, and walked into the back room. Colette looked at Fleur, feeling helpless. Gunther had shouted and denied it could have been his, calling Colette terrible names. At least Sébastien hadn’t made a scene, which was slightly better.

‘What did your mother say?’ Fleur asked. Her eyes had followed Sébastien across the room and it was to Colette’s eternal thanks that she had not gone to comfort him. Colette felt the worst guilt she could recall. Fleur cared for Sébastien and Colette had just ruined his life through thoughtless, selfish behaviour.

‘She told me to abort it or to stay in the house until it was born and then give it up.Disposeof it.’

She curled her lip in distaste at the ominous sounding phrase.

‘I don’t want to do either of those things so I told her I was leaving home.’

She gestured to the suitcase. ‘I came to ask you to let me live in the flat above the bookshop. I wouldn’t need much and I have nowhere else to go.’

She glanced at the door Sébastien had exited through and added in a small voice, ‘I’m on my own.’

Fleur followed her gaze. ‘It was a shock to him. Trust him. Come and sit down.’

After what had felt like hours, but could have been no more than five minutes, at most, Sébastien reappeared. He walked to the table where the two women sat and dropped to one knee.

‘Colette, will you marry me?’

Her jaw dropped.

Like any other girl, she had dreamed of the day that the man she adored would ask for her hand in marriage, but it had always been somewhere dramatic. In front of or at the top of the Eiffel Tower. On a moonlit beach at Nice. Sailing along the Loire past a chateau – preferably one he owned. Anywhere but a dingy bar in the middle of the day during wartime.

The man of her dreams had never been Sébastien either. She hadn’t met him yet and now, thanks to her carelessness, she never would. She burst into tears.

Sébastien looked mortified and struggled to his feet. She realised how cruel to him she was being. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘No, I’m sorry.’ Colette sniffed. ‘Of all the things you could have said to me, I didn’t expect you to ask me that. Do you mean you aren’t angry? You aren’t going to leave me?’

Sébastien shook his head, ‘Not angry, no. Surprised, definitely. Scared, for certain. But I could never be angry with you. It isn’t as though you’ve got pregnant without my help.’

Her heart swelled and a little of the bleakness she had felt since learning of her condition ebbed away. He was the best man she had ever known. How different her life might have been if Gunther had reacted in this manner.

She realised that silence had fallen over the café. She looked around at the faces of people Sébastien must know. Even the German patrons were looking at them eagerly. She felt as if she had been picked up and dropped in the middle of a film but not one with a happy ending.

‘Sébastien, that’s the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me, but you don’t have to marry me. Yes, I’m going to have the baby, but after that I will try find a family who will adopt it. It isn’t fair on you to change your life. Neither of us want marriage, do we?’

She caught the quick flash of relief flit across his eyes. He wasn’t going to argue with her too hard. She leaned down and embraced him.

‘Thank you. You are wonderful,’ she whispered.

‘I know I am,’ he said, giving her a weak grin. ‘I will do whatever I can to help until the baby arrives. Afterwards too. I suppose I should meet your parents and apologise to them.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Colette exclaimed, aghast at the idea of Sébastien and Delphine in the same room. ‘I mean, you have nothing to apologise for. It isn’t something you didtome. We did it together.’

‘I think I had better speak to them,’ Fleur said.

She had been sitting quietly, trapped in the corner by the dramatic scenes taking place at the other side of the table.

‘To Louis, at least. He has been so kind letting me live with you but now I think it is time for me to leave. The apartment has two bedrooms. You take one and I’ll take the other.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ Colette said. She could feel tears rising, emotions swelling inside her at the way her friends had responded. She was not alone.

‘I want to. I’ll save hours of not having to cycle all the way there and back.’

Colette gave a small laugh. ‘Then it’s settled. Thank you.’

If the exchange with Delphine had been harrowing, it was nothing compared with the emotional onslaught that Colette’s interview with her father wreaked on her. He appeared unannounced at the bookshop a week after she had moved out, bearing two heavy cases. She led him upstairs to the apartment. He dropped the cases by his side, put his head into his hands and groaned.

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