Page 135 of Daughters of Paris

Fleur’s eyes prickled. Leaving Paris and saying goodbye to her dear friends would wrench her heart from her body, but saying goodbye to Laurent for the second time would do that too.

‘Yes, I do. I do so very much.’

Colette hugged her. ‘Of course you do. It isn’t me you need to be saying that to though, is it?’ She glanced over Fleur’s shoulder. ‘You can come in now.’

Laurent walked through the door.

‘How long have you been there?’ Fleur asked. She glanced at Colette who had a triumphant look on her face. This had been planned all along. She wondered how much he had heard.

‘Decades, I think. At least that is what it felt like waiting.’ He glanced at Colette. ‘Does this mean your friend has persuaded you to leave her side?’

‘Yes,’ Fleur said.

His face creased, joy spreading over it. In three steps he had gathered her into his arms.

‘Then my darling, everything is settled. Shall we marry here or in England?’

Fleur laughed. ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. Anywhere you choose.’

‘Here, of course,’ Colette said. ‘I’ll be too pregnant to travel soon and I demand to be involved, and Louise will make a charming bridesmaid. I will miss you dreadfully, but I expect you to come back and see me as often as you can. I will come to England to see you too and we’ll write to each other – and make sure the letters arrive. Every summer we can all travel to Brittany to stay with Sébastien’s family there. They live near Morlaix. Like the name of the café, of course.’

Laurent reached for Fleur’s hand. He pressed it tightly. ‘It sounds like Colette has our lives planned for us all.’

‘Oh I do,’ Colette said. ‘And wherever you are, we’ll always be sisters.’

Fleur beamed, tears welling up, but tears of joy. A future stretched before her of love and family. No war. Only brightness.

‘Yes, we will.’

Epilogue

In the summer of 1994, two elderly couples walked along on the promenade at Cabourg on the Normandy coast. The women walked arm in arm, one tall and plump, with steel-grey hair set in an elaborate bun, the other shorter and more delicate, with soft streaks of silver in her chin-length bob. Their husbands were a little way behind, the larger one in a wheelchair pushed by a handsome man in his early forties, and the other steadying himself with a walking frame.

‘Fifty years since Paris was liberated,’ Fleur said, lowering herself onto a bench. ‘I can scarcely believe it.’

‘Look at us now. We are old. Louise is getting married again next year to a younger man. The children from his first marriage will be coming to stay with us while they honeymoon.’ Colette sighed and took a bite out of her ice cream. ‘Can you imagine what I shall do with two almost teenagers running around the house? I don’t know why they couldn’t go and stay with one of their uncles. What was the point in me having four children if I can’t make use of them?’

‘Tell them there is a secret garden and let them look for it.’ Fleur laughed, adjusting her sunglasses. The prescription evidently needed updating because the road signs were looking fuzzy.

The two women sat in silence on the bench, contemplating the past and possibly the future. The men drew alongside. Colette shuffled up to make room for Sébastien, grumbling good-naturedly as he tangled his frame in her skirt.

‘Are you gossiping?’ he asked, leaning over to kiss Colette’s cheek.

‘Thinking about the past,’ Fleur said. She narrowed her eyes and tutted playfully. ‘Charles, why aren’t you wearing your hat? Laurence, be a dear and nip back to the car to fetch it for him.’

Laurence jogged off. He was a handsome man who had his father’s build but his mother’s sharp eyes. It had taken seven years of disappointments and heartbreak to conceive him and Fleur loved him dearly. She watched him go.

‘I don’t think Laurence will ever marry. Did I tell you he is a homosexual?’

‘Yes, you did.’

More than once, Colette mused privately.

‘Ah. I thought I might have. I do hate not having a sharp memory any longer. He has a “partner”, as they call each other, who races vintage cars and they live in the lodge on the edge of the estate. I think Charles is quite happy with the situation as he gets to tinker about under the bonnets, aren’t you, Charles?’

‘Partner indeed!’ Colette said, rolling her eyes. ‘Of course they all think this is new and that they were the first to invent the idea. If only they could see what went on in the clubs of Montmartre in the thirties and forties. Their eyes would water!’

Fleur stared out to sea. ‘Of course. Sophie. I wonder what happened to her?’

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