Page 129 of Daughters of Paris

Delphine swallowed and nodded. Colette went into the bedroom and brought the sleepy girl out. Louise tried immediately to climb down so she could toddle across to the basket of toys and pulled a face when Colette held her tight.

‘She looks like you.’ Delphine smiled for the first time. ‘She is beautiful.’

‘She is called Louise,’ Colette said.

‘After your father? Oh!’ Delphine crumpled into tears again, sobbing and hugging herself tightly. ‘I’m so, so sorry, mychérie. I was furious with you and distraught for you. I behaved so badly.’

Louise began to wail. Colette jiggled her up and down on her knee. Delphine’s eyes were on the child constantly.

‘Would you like to hold her?’ Colette offered.

Delphine nodded. Her lip began to wobble and she bit it. She held her arms out.

‘My granddaughter,’ she murmured as Colette placed Louise into her arms. She bent and kissed Louise’s forehead and whispered something Colette didn’t catch.

Colette smiled. ‘Let me make coffee. I think we could both do with some. I have no sugar, but I do have a little milk.’

Fleur and Sophie returned from shopping while the coffee was brewing and Louise clambered off Delphine’s knee and demanded to kiss Augustin. Then Sophie corralled both children and took them off into the bedroom. Colette whispered to Fleur what had happened, and the two women hugged tight before Fleur joined Sophie and the children.

Delphine watched the exchange quietly with an odd sort of expression on her face.

‘This is where all of you live?’

‘Yes. Fleur sleeps in that room, and I share my room with Sophie and the children.’

‘This is so small,’ Delphine said. ‘So cramped. It’s not good for a baby. Come back home. The house is too big for me alone.’

Colette gaped at the unexpected offer. ‘Home with you? With Louise?’

‘Yes. I should never have forced you into leaving. It was heartless of me. I’ve wasted so many months and now we are both alone and we shouldn’t be.’

Of course the offer was made out of self-interest. Delphine needed to be surrounded by people.

‘I am not alone,’ Colette replied. ‘I have Fleur, Sophie, Louise, and Augustin.’

Then Colette paused and considered the offer sensibly

The apartment was cramped and unbearably hot in summer. Louise was growing and would need a room of her own eventually. A garden she could play in. Maybe more than anything she needed family. She heard Augustin begin to cry and Fleur’s level tone soothing her.

‘If I come, I won’t come alone. I want Fleur too.’

‘Why?’ She could almost see Delphine’s internal struggle. Her mother was still the same woman after all.

‘You said yourself the house is too big for one person, but really it is too big for three. If you want me then you will have to take my friend too. Both of them, in fact, if Sophie wants to bring Augustin. She can’t stay here alone if we go.’

Delphine looked at her and Colette saw something she had never seen before: a growing respect.

‘You’ve changed, Colette.’

‘We’ve all changed,Mère. Anyone who has not changed because of the war is inhuman. I think it’s a change for the better.’

‘You might be right,’ Delphine said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, your friends can come too. For the time being at least. If that is the price of having you back, then I will willingly pay it.’

She stood and gathered her bag. Before she left, she peered round the doorway of Colette’s bedroom and smiled. ‘The crib looks lovely.’

Colette blinked. ‘You know about that?’

Delphine smiled slightly condescendingly. ‘Your father was a great man in many ways, but he did not know the first thing about how to decorate a nursery.’

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