Ten minutes later the researcher returned with copies of two identity cards. The top one was for Dido Le Roy. It listed her name, date of birth, address and employment as a cabaret singer, alongside her black and white photograph glued onto the page.
‘Look at her when she was young. What a stunner,’ Will said as they took in the fair hair and startling pale eyes. ‘It’s funny, thinking of Dido when I last saw her. I can see traces of that elderly woman in the photo of this young one. And I can see fragments of the woman she’d grow into in this picture here. But it still feels so odd to look at her this young.’
‘I only have fragments of memories really,’ Lucy said. ‘From those family parties all those years ago.’
Dido was smiling into the camera; her eyes shining where lightfrom the flash must have caught them. It gave her a real star quality. Her lips were painted crimson, which showed as a dark pout in the image. ‘Good for her,’ Lucy said. ‘She was a beauty and must have known it.’
They turned the document on the table and looked at the one underneath, the identity document for Persephone Le Roy. ‘And here she is,’ Will said, looking at the black and white photograph attached to the document. ‘The elusive Persephone.’
Lucy looked for a long time at the dark hair rolled into sweeps, the dark eyes, the unpainted lips, the wool cardigan draped over her shoulders and, more importantly, Lucy thought, the slightly defiant expression on her face, which smacked of a flat-out refusal to smile for the Germans while they were registering her details.
‘She looks pissed off,’ Will said abruptly and Lucy’s raucous laugh broke the silence in the ancient building.
‘She really does. Wouldn’t you though?’ Lucy asked. ‘I’m not sure I’d have been too keen to be “registered” by an invading army so they knew where I lived, what I did for a job, my age …’
‘It’s even worse these days,’ Will countered.
‘Yes, I suppose. But back then, this must have all been so completely terrifying. So … alien.’
‘If they were the only files available to us relating to the sisters at Deux Tourelles,’ Will said, ‘then that letter, the one saying she knew where a Jew was, can’t have been taken seriously.’
‘Or maybe it was,’ Lucy replied. ‘Maybe they raided the house to find the Jewish girl, didn’t find her because she wasn’t real, and so there’s no record of it. They must have raided hundreds of houses, week in, week out for the entirety of the Occupation. Or maybe you’re right. That wall in the museum had so many letters from Islanders informing on other Islanders, and if that was just a smattering of the selection sent, then I wouldn’t be surprised to hear if the Germans learnt to weed out the bullshit pretty swiftly and ignored the vast majority or at least some of them.’
Lucy looked again at the photo of Persephone and then of Dido,wanting to remember what these women who had endured life during the Occupation looked like, before she handed the documents back.
‘What do you want to do now?’ Will asked.
‘I’m not sure what else we can do. We still have no idea if Persephone was arrested and deported to an overseas prison. The online resistance site didn’t list her and there’s nothing here about her. You’re probably right. Maybe the Gestapo left her alone.’
Chapter 26
1943
Still shaking, Persephone wheeled her bicycle into the drive of Deux Tourelles. She stared, wide-eyed at the house. It would be one of the last times she would see it, and she drank it in, bathed in autumnal sunlight, the reddening ivy creeping its way gently northward on the wall where it had been allowed to grow unchecked since the start of the Occupation.
The front door swung open and Persephone paused, her heart clanging desperately in her chest. Stefan stood on the front steps, staring at her, blinking. She looked down at her clothes, bloody and torn, and then up at him seeing herself through his eyes. His mouth dropped, but he said nothing and then, coming to his senses he rushed towards her.
‘You are hurt,’ he cried. ‘What has happened?’ He stopped only a few feet from her.
She swallowed, hardly daring to say it; hardly daring to tell him the awful truth of what she had done. And then when she didn’t he demanded. ‘Tell me,’ he cried, reaching out to touch her and then finding nowhere suitable to place his hand, he dropped it. ‘You are hurt,’ he repeated. His eyes darted, taking in the complete picture of her.
‘No,’ she said and then, looking at her palm, still indented fromwhere she’d clutched the rock so tightly, and her knuckles and back of her hand smeared with her own blood mixed with that of the soldier’s. ‘Yes, a little but—’
‘Persey,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me. Who did this to you?’
‘No one. I did it.’
‘I do not under—’
‘I’ve killed someone,’ she said dumbly. ‘A man. I’ve killed a man.’
He stared at her, slack-jawed, and whispered, ‘What? How?’ And then suddenly, he pulled her by the arm, ‘Come inside. Now. Quickly.’
He dragged her inside the house, leaving her bicycle lying on the ground outside. She glanced back at it. Someone might take it. She would have no use for it where she was going, but it would serve as a decent spare for Dido or Jack. Strange how such a mundane and practical thought came to her now. Stefan slammed the door behind him and stood in front of her. ‘Tell me. Tell me what happened,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers. ‘Who have you killed?’ He spoke as if he didn’t believe her.
‘A soldier.’
He gasped. It made no difference if it was a soldier or a civilian in Persey’s eyes. A man was still a man. A life was still a life.
