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PARIS, 1943
In the new year, she found out that Harald Vlig had suffered a heart attack. When Busch told her, she was careful to sound concerned. ‘Oh no…’ But her heart thundered in her ears. Part of her had been waiting on tenterhooks, almost half convinced it hadn’t worked. She had killed a man. It made her feel ill to think about.
‘That’s so sad,’ she managed.
‘Terribly said, especially as he’d only just begun to live a little – eating French cuisine at last. Perhaps that’s what finished him off.’
For a moment she forgot to breathe.
Then he laughed. ‘Look at your face, you’d almost think you had killed him yourself. Don’t look so worried, you’re like my mother, she was always worried she’d give us food poisoning. She was phobic about meat and rice.’
Marianne blinked. ‘Oh, I suppose I am a bit too.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he repeated, giving her arm a squeeze, ‘the doctor said he was at that age – high risk and he had a very stressful job.’
That night it was just a few regulars for dinner, Busch and some of his men. They spent the evening playing cards and drinking wine, and Henri was invited to join in. Busch was in a contemplative mood, perhaps due to the sudden death of his mentor, Harald Vlig. ‘Let’s toast the old man, in the manner he would have liked.’ Then he smiled. ‘He wasn’t a fan of their cuisine but he did love their wine,’ and he called out to Marianne, asking her for a bottle of Bordeaux Lafite 1925.
Busch’s deputy swirled the wine in his glass and took a sip, then sighed in pleasure. ‘You always know the best wine to order, you must have grown up rather differently to me.’
Busch raised a brow. ‘Oh, I doubt it. For a little while my father owned a pub in Hanover, and I paid attention to what was the most expensive.’
His deputy laughed. ‘That must have been great, growing up in a pub? Free beers whenever you wanted them?’
Busch’s face changed. ‘No, well, it might have been, he died when I was nine, my mother passed when I was baby, after that I was sent into the system.’
Marianne stared at Busch; she couldn’t believe they shared something in common. The loss of a parent so young, it also made her wonder how different he might have been had his father lived.
Their mood had turned sombre and Busch shrugged it off. ‘Let’s have a good German beer to cleanse us of all of that,’ he said, and the others roared with laughter.
It was a further three weeks before she caught sight of Sebastien. He walked past her and said mildly, ‘Fine day today isn’t it, madame?’ Though it was raining, she smiled as brightly as if the sun was shining.
Her knees almost buckled in relief.
It was only later that night after she had locked up for the night, that she allowed herself to cry, great sobbing tears of relief.
She missed Marguerite so much it was an open wound, but this, what they had achieved, made her sure that what she was doing was worth it.
‘One day,’ she promised her absent child, safe at the abbey with Sister Augustine, ‘one day you will understand, I hope.’
Marianne wished that she could tell Gilbert about the children. She could see it in his eyes, the guilt he felt at not relaying what he knew to the Resistance.
But it was what had kept him alive.
He was distracted from his guilt by the sudden decline in the health of his mother. The doctor said it didn’t seem likely that she was going to live much longer. Marianne told him and Henri that they needed to spend this time with her. Henri seemed to want to be anywhere but at home. ‘It’s just so hard,’ he admitted, ‘over the past few weeks she’s got so thin, it’s like she’s starting to wither away, I hate seeing her like that.’
Marianne’s heart bled for them, she knew how hard it was to lose a mother, and with Grand-mère, who had been like a second mother to her, it was like she’d lost two.
‘Henri, you don’t know how long she has left.’
There was a sound from behind and Busch came in, making straight for Marianne, touching her back gently, and then seeing Henri’s troubled face, he asked, ‘What’s this? What happened?’ His expression grew concerned as he came forward to touch the boy’s shoulders.
‘I’m fine,’ lied the boy.
‘It’s Berthe,’ said Marianne. ‘She hasn’t been doing very well.’
‘Oh, son,’ said Busch, and he looked at the boy in sympathy. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Henri quickly dashed away a tear, then looked at the floor. ‘The doctor is coming tomorrow morning, he’s given her some new tablets; he said they might help.’
