A Week in Paris Read online

  Rachel Hore worked in London publishing for many years before moving with her family to Norwich, where she teaches publishing and creative writing at the University of East Anglia. She is married to the writer D. J. Taylor and they have three sons.

  Her previous novels are The Dream House, The Memory Garden, The Glass Painter’s Daughter, which was shortlisted for the 2010 Romantic Novel of the Year award, A Place of Secrets, which was picked by Richard and Judy for their book club, A Gathering Storm, which was shortlisted for the RONA Historical Novel of the Year 2012, and the latest bestseller, The Silent Tide.

  Praise for The Silent Tide

  ‘Compelling, engrossing and moving; a perfect holiday indulgence’

  Santa Montefiore

  ‘Engrossing and romantic, it’s a wonderful story of family secrets and the choices women make’

  Jane Thynne, author of Black Roses

  Praise for A Gathering Storm

  ‘With a serious eye for exquisite detail, Hore’s latest, brilliantly crafted novel aptly follows a photographer, Lucy. She takes a journey to capture past, life-changing family secrets, embracing three generations along the way, across Cornwall, London, East Anglia and Occupied France’

  Mirror

  Praise for A Place of Secrets

  ‘A fascinating, hugely readable book . . . Rachel Hore’s research and her mastery of the subject is deeply impressive’

  Judy Finnigan

  Praise for The Glass Painter’s Daughter

  ‘Another of this year’s top offerings’

  Daily Mail

  Praise for The Memory Garden

  ‘Pitched perfectly for a holiday read’

  Guardian

  Praise for The Dream House

  ‘A beautifully written and magical novel’

  Cathy Kelly

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2014

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Rachel Hore 2014

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Rachel Hore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

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  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  PB ISBN: 978-1-47113-076-2

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47113-077-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  For Juliet and Victoria

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  November 1944

  Derbyshire, England

  She was a scrappy wisp of a girl who lived with forty-three other children in a large ugly house on the edge of a country town. The meagre grounds of Blackdyke House were covered not with grass, but with gravel, and enclosed by a wooden paling fence because the original wrought iron had gone for scrap. The orphanage had been evacuated here from London, but that was long before the girl had arrived. Her mind refused to contemplate the past. She’d blotted it out. So far as she was concerned, she might always have lived at Blackdyke House. Perhaps she always would.

  The dark-panelled walls inside were studded with gloomy portraits whose eyes seemed to follow her as she walked in line with the other children from dormitory to refectory, from refectory to schoolroom. In the entrance hall hung the painting she feared most of all. It showed a row of dead rabbits and birds nailed to a beam. The glazed eyes and the trickles of dried blood that ran down their bodies had been executed with deft brushstrokes, as though the artist had taken pleasure in the task. She would hurry past it without looking, but still she could sense it there.

  The town was near an airfield, and whenever planes roared overhead she would run to hide in a cupboard or under a bed, where she lay curled up, her small body taut with terror, until they’d passed. Some of the older children teased her about being afraid of their own planes, but she couldn’t help her reaction. And she didn’t explain because she couldn’t speak.

  The nurses at the orphanage were not uncaring. They simply did as Matron said: ‘Treat the children equally, be kind but firm, don’t get too close.’ Some of their charges were grieving, several had lost both parents in terrible circumstances, but Matron believed that a strict routine should settle them: good plain food, fresh air, church twice on Sundays. A list of rules was displayed on a board outside Matron’s office, opposite the picture of the dead creatures. At five years old the girl could not read all the words, but she knew each rule began with the same instruction: Don’t.

  The number of children in the orphanage wasn’t always forty-four. Sometimes a relative would come to claim one. Sometimes there would be a new face: sad and bewildered, or angry and desperate. Never anything to cause Matron to deviate from her routine.

  And every now and then there would be a viewing. A married couple might come to inspect the children and perhaps pick one out. For adoption, was the awed whisper. The children knew about adoption – it meant being given a new mother and father to replace the old ones. Most of the children longed to be adopted, to have somewhere to belong. Yet she noticed the doubtful expressions of some who were chosen. Not all the prospective parents looked kind.

  She wanted to belong somewhere, but nobody ever chose her. Most of the couples picked babies or toddlers, and those willing to take an older child certainly didn’t want a girl who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – speak. That might be storing up all kinds of trouble.

  So she lived her life day by day, unable to mourn the past she’d suppressed or to hope for the future. She wasn’t unhappy, exactly. Rather, her heart had frozen up inside. Only in sleep did she know deep happiness or sorrow. Sometimes her dreams were full of noise or fear or simply laced with loneliness.

  There were some nights, however, that she dreamed of someone singing to her in a soft low voice, a woman’s voice. A woman with a lovely face and gentle hands. And after such a dream she would wake to find her pillow streaked with tears.

  Chapter 1

  March 1956

  Paris

  Fay pushed open th
e heavy door and followed the other girls into the soft gloom of the interior. The air hung heavy with incense and it took a moment to adjust to the whispering darkness and the vastness of the space. On either side of the nave, a line of arches undulated towards a light-filled area before the altar. High overhead soared a vaulted ceiling. It was all breathtakingly beautiful.

  ‘Gather round, girls!’ Miss Edwards’ well-bred English tones summoning her sixth-formers sounded distant and dreamlike. Fay crossed the chequered floor, and lingered at the edge of the group in time to hear her say, ‘Notre Dame is French for what? Our Lady, that’s right, Evelyn. A masterpiece of gothic architecture, and the heart and soul of Paris for centuries. The cathedral is built on the site of . . .’ but Fay was hardly listening.

  Her attention was attracted instead by a row of stained-glass windows. She edged sideways to contemplate them more clearly. Each was a patchwork of glowing colours with rich, sensuous names. Crimson, she said to herself. Imperial purple, indigo, lapis lazuli. Far from being overwhelmed by the darkness of the church, the colours shone out, their beauty enhanced by it. She was pondering the significance of light shining out of darkness when Miss Edwards said, ‘Fay, dear, are you still with us?’ which brought her out of her reverie.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled. After that she did her best to keep up.

  When they reached the open space before the choir stalls and the altar, the girls loitered, pointing in wonder at the great rose windows floating high above the transepts on either side, bathing everything in jewelled light. Even Margaret, usually bored by sightseeing and culture, spread her arms to admire the rainbow on her coat. ‘Golly,’ she managed to muster, her bold eyes softened with delight. ‘Golly.’

  Fay smiled at this, but as she glanced about, half-listening to Miss Edwards, she felt troubled. The more she tried to catch at her unease, the stronger it became. It meant something to her, this place – and yet how could it? She’d never been here before. This school trip was her first time in Paris. She knew it was.

  Later they explored the aisle that curved round behind the altar, and stopped to peep into some of the prayer chapels that fringed the outside walls. Fay and Evelyn liked an altar where there was a carving of the Virgin Mary cradling the dearest Baby Jesus, who reached out a dimpled hand. Evelyn insisted on lighting a votive candle there, but Margaret hung back, more interested in a group of boys in striped blazers who were milling about outside.

  ‘Aren’t they with us?’ she whispered to Fay.

  ‘I think so.’ She recognized one, a tall slender lad with butter-coloured hair that gleamed like a choirboy’s in the dimness, remembering him from the Channel ferry. She’d been going up on deck to get some air and had met him coming the other way down the narrow stairway. He’d smiled as he’d held back to let her pass.

  The girls were leaving the chapel when it happened. From somewhere high in the building a bell began to toll with a sound so deep and grave that the very air vibrated. Fay clapped her hands over her ears to shut out the sound, but on and on it rang. She couldn’t breathe. She needed to get out. Turning, she ran blindly. And barged straight into someone. A hand gripped her arm. ‘Whoa!’ the someone said softly.

  She looked up to see the blond boy. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped wildly, but allowed him to steady her.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the ringing stopped. As the echoes died, her panic, too, ebbed away.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the boy asked in his clear, cultured voice. He released her and she stepped back, hardly daring to look at him properly. His forehead was crinkled in a frown. Such an expressive face he had, the dark eyes full of concern.

  ‘Thank you, I’m fine now.’ She could not stop the shame rising in her cheeks. Evelyn came across to claim her whilst Margaret set off with her funny loping run to fetch Miss Edwards. The boy remained quietly by. His companions hung about in the background, cuffing each other and laughing.

  Eventually the graceful figure of Miss Edwards hurried up and Fay was glad to hear her light tones: ‘Fay! That’ll do, everyone. It’s all over now.’ And she steered Fay away with gentle firmness.

  They sat together in the chapel before the Virgin and the entreating baby. ‘What on earth was the matter, Fay?’ her teacher murmured. ‘It was only a bell. Summoning people to a service, I expect.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fay answered with a shiver. ‘It frightened me, that’s all. I’m all right now, really.’ She was struggling to capture a formless memory. No, whatever it was had gone.

  That evening, the chatter of English voices rose to the roof of a huge reception room in the Hôtel de Ville. It was like the twittering of starlings in the trees of Place de la Concorde at twilight. At the sound of a car backfiring, the birds would lift together in a great cloud, its shape forming and reforming against the purpling sky.

  These were gaudier birds than starlings – several hundred sixth-formers and their teachers from fifteen English schools gathered under one roof for the final night of a spring trip to Paris organized by the League of Friendship. The girls were awkward and self-conscious in their first evening gowns, the boys hot and uncomfortable in formal suits with stiff collars. Earlier there had been lengthy speeches by stuffy French dignitaries, then a buffet supper of strange meats in aspic and an oily salad. Rumours of a skiffle band had been dismissed, but now that the string quartet was tuning up beside the area cleared for dancing, excitement was mounting all the same.

  From her place of safety by the wall, Fay scanned the crowd, wondering where Evelyn and Margaret could have gone while she’d been in the powder room. They’d all been talking to two boys from Winchester a moment ago; or rather Evelyn and Margaret had. Fay hung back, unpractised in the flirtatious banter the occasion demanded, and worried that her neckline was sinking too low. She’d muttered an excuse and slipped away.

  In the ladies’ she’d repinned the dress then stared at her fragile features in the ornate looking-glass. She tried not to notice how the garment’s murky shade of green made her skin look bleached, and dulled the blue of her eyes. Her mother, reluctant to let her come on this trip at all, had not been able to afford a new dress to be made up for a single night, so Fay had borrowed one from a neighbour’s daughter.

  Mummy had done her best to alter it, Fay conceded, and had shown her a pretty way of wearing her dark hair – she tucked a stray wave back into the slide – but they both recognized that the dress would no more than ‘do’. Certainly she felt dreary next to striking, chestnut-haired Margaret, sheathed in full-length ivory, or fair Evelyn, pretty as a doll in gauzy blue. She frowned at her reflection, scooped up her homemade evening bag and set off back to the hall. There must be some boy, she thought grimly, who would save her pride by claiming her for a dance.

  Standing by the wall, watching the crowd, she eventually spotted a statuesque white figure that could only be Margaret. As she started to weave her way towards her, someone touched her arm and a clear voice said, ‘Hello, again.’ She turned and found herself looking into the face of the blond boy from that morning.

  ‘Adam Warner,’ he said rather shyly, putting out his hand. ‘You remember . . . from Notre Dame?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said, shaking it. ‘I’m Fay – Fay Knox.’ She added, ‘I should apologize for my ridiculous behaviour.’

  ‘Nothing to apologize for,’ he said quickly. His forehead wrinkled in that nice way he had, as though he was really listening to her. ‘Are you all right now?’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, a little too enthusiastically. ‘Completely all right.’

  ‘Good, I’m glad.’

  ‘I’m not usually so silly.’

  ‘The bell was very loud,’ he said with a grave expression.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ She was relieved to be taken seriously. ‘And it was the urgency of it.’ She’d puzzled about the incident for the rest of the day, remembering how the sound had cut into her, unmade her. Margaret had snorted with laughter afterwards, of course. Their sch
ool lives were ordered by bells. Why make a fuss about this one? Fay still had no answer.

  Just then, the musicians struck into a lively foxtrot and all around them people started pairing off. Fay glimpsed Margaret taking the floor with the taller and cockier of the boys from Winchester, but couldn’t see Evelyn.

  ‘I say, do you like dancing?’ Adam asked.

  ‘I’m not very good at it,’ she said cautiously. She’d hated dance classes at school, the stupidity of being paired with other girls, nobody wanting to lead.

  ‘Nor am I.’ It was his turn to look relieved. ‘Shall we try? Perhaps we wouldn’t tread on each other’s toes very much.’

  He offered her his hand and she took it, and followed him through the crowd. She’d feared being a wallflower this evening, but here she was, asked for the first dance by this, not handsome exactly, but certainly very nice-looking boy. Margaret raised an eyebrow as she sailed by in the arms of her partner and Fay couldn’t help giving her a smug smile.

  She found dancing with Adam delightful and her toes were quite safe. It was much more natural than having to lead Evelyn in lessons. They seemed to float along, she giving him little glances that took in the rich brown of his eyes, his fair skin with its light dusting of freckles. He’d only just started needing to shave and his mouth still had a boyish tenderness.

  They weren’t able to hear easily above the music, but she learned that he was at one of the older grammar schools somewhere near the Welsh border. A couple of hundred miles then from Little Barton in Norfolk, where Fay lived with her mother, and the girls’ high school she attended in Norwich. This League of Friendship trip was a one-off, so realistically, they were hardly likely to bump into one another again. For her this lent the occasion a certain poignancy.

  The foxtrot ended and a waltz began. They kept passing Evelyn, dancing with another boy from Adam’s school, a boy who rather gauchely kept addressing comments to Adam instead of talking to his partner. Then that dance, too, ended and Fay and Adam found themselves standing awkwardly on the edge of the dance floor, neither sure what to do next.