The Paris Agent(78)

It was a distraction and that meant an opportunity for me. As they dragged her from the room, sobbing and crying, I ripped the top sheet of our notes in half, intending to stuff it into my mouth.

A brutal hand closed around my wrist. The sudden shock of the pain made my knees give out, then another man rushed at me, snatching the paper from my hands.

C H A P T E R 19

CHARLOTTE

Liverpool, 1970

Later that night, I’m sitting in the living room watching TV. Dad has just come home from work and is at the dining room table behind me, eating the steak and eggs I prepared for him. Dad is too polite to mention it, but I’ve managed to overcook the steak and undercook the eggs.

My stomach is aflutter with butterflies. I have a million questions about the SOE I want to ask Dad, but I know he’s not ready to answer them so I haven’t asked. It’s different when it comes to Theo. He’s helping us out of the goodness of his heart, and I know my dad would want to help him in return if he can.

“Hey, Dad?” I say gently, twisting in my seat to face him.

“Hmm?” Dad stares down at his plate as he saws at the tough steak. He scoops the slice up and drops it to Wrigley, who’s lying beneath the chair. Dad would never have allowed Wrigley to sit so close to the dinner table before Mum died, let alone feed the dog from his own plate.

Dad looks exhausted. There are bags beneath his eyes and his shoulders are slumped. My heart sinks as I realize I can’t ask him. Not tonight.

“Never mind,” I say, and I turn back to the TV, but I’m trying to watch the news and all I can think about is teenage Theo borrowing his father’s car and driving across the country only to discover he didn’t even know his own birth date. I suck in a breath and force myself to turn back to Dad. “When you were training with the SOE, did you ever come across an agent known as Chloe?”

Dad’s cutlery clatters as he drops it against his plate.

“Why on earth did you ask me that?” he asks me sharply. I open my mouth to tell him about Theo but at the very last second, think better of it.

I can’t betray Theo’s confidence. This is his story to tell, if he chooses to tell it at all. It’s hard to explain any of this without explaining that Theo broke the law and snuck into Professor Read’s secure room.

I gnaw my lip and decide to lie.

“Theo mentioned he’d come across that name in his studies with Professor Read.”

“I knew her,” Dad says abruptly. He pushes back his chair and stands, then, giving up any pretense of eating my rubbish meal, bends to scrape his entire dinner into Wrigley’s bowl.

“Did you work with her?” I ask hesitantly. Dad is silent for a long moment, staring down at the dog as he licks his bowl clean. My father’s expression is so tense, a shiver of concern runs through me. “Dad?”

“I knew her well,” he says. “We were good friends.” He looks across at me and his gaze is completely hollow. “What did Theo want to know about her?”

“Did you train with her?”

Dad scrubs a hand over his face, then walks slowly across the room to take a seat in Mum’s armchair. He leans forward toward me and his expression eases to something closer to weariness.

“We did serve together late in the war, but I also knew her well before the SOE.”

“You did…？” I gasp, then, so excited I can barely bring myself to breathe, I whisper, “Dad, does that mean you know what her real name was?”

“Of course. Her real name was Josie Miller,” he says softly, but then he pauses. “Actually, her name was Jocelyn Nina Miller. She much preferred people use her nickname—Josie.”

“Was she French?”

“She was born in London. Her father was some well-to-do lawyer and her mother a doctor. There was an especially acrimonious divorce when she was an infant and her mother moved her to France. She grew up in Paris and lived there until the occupation.” A sad, distant look comes onto Dad’s face. “Do you remember I told you I traveled with a woman on the escape line? That was Josie. She was a tiny scrap of a thing but God, Lottie, her spirit was immense. We walked dozens of miles in a single night and every one of my footsteps meant two or three for her. She was exhausted, but there was no stopping her—she just kept going.” He pauses, then laughs suddenly. “I was absolutely terrified and wanted nothing more than to crawl into a little ball to hide beneath a tree, but I had to keep going because I was too proud to admit any of that in front of her.”

“She sounds remarkable.”

Dad sighs sadly.

“She really was, love.”

“Do you remember anything about her personal life?” I ask uncertainly. “Did she have children, for example?”

My father looks so pained by this question I instantly regret asking it.

“She wanted children and she was marvelous with them,” he whispers, then he swallows heavily. “But no, she never had the chance to have her own.”

“And you saw her often through the war?”

“We wrote letters for a long time after we made it out of France. I was serving at first, training flight mechanics you recall, and about the same time, she was here in England, quite unwell.” That’s interesting. Perhaps, if Theo is correct and Josie Miller’s “surgery” was a covert pregnancy, Dad might not even have known. “Later in the war we were posted together.” A warm fondness crosses my father’s face and it strikes me that this is the very first time I’ve seen him reminisce about the war without becoming visibly pained by the memories. But his expression sobers, and he tilts his head at me. “Why is Theo so interested in Josie?”