‘Not Felix?’ I asked her.
‘No, it won’t be Felix this time.’
I hesitated for a moment then. ‘I know I’m not supposed to ask questions, but I have to know this one thing – will it be Monsieur Guigner?’
At the mention of the name, Miss Ellis looked very angry. Her mouth set into a thin line and her cheeks flushed red. ‘Josie, I can absolutely assure you of one thing: it most certainly will not be the agent who used to call himself Guigner. He was discovered to have been a turncoat, responsible for betraying many of the men who were arrested, including your father. He bargained with the Gestapo, trading the lives of other, far better men in return for his own. But luckily the network that people like your papa had managed to put in place has been strong enough to survive the loss of so many of their number. On Guigner’s release, there was a band of résistants waiting for him. They have made sure that none of us will ever see anything of that treacherous snake ever again.’
I felt a surge of anger myself when I heard it was that horrible, despicable man who had betrayed my papa. I remembered how annoyed he’d been when I appeared at the door of our hotel just behind him and stopped him from hurting Annette any worse than he already had done. I suppose he’d borne a grudge against us ever since. I knew I ought to feel pity for him – a traitor who had been unceremoniously killed by the comrades he was supposed to be helping – but the truth is I didn’t. I just felt glad that he was gone because if I ever saw him again, I would have killed him myself. So I agreed, in that case, to deliver my project to the Parc Murdoch at 5.30 that afternoon.
At the end of my lesson Miss Ellis gave me a hug, which surprised me. As an Englishwoman, she is usually far more formal. ‘Your papa would be so proud of you, Josie. What you’re doing today may seem like just another small task to you, but it’s of crucial importance. You’ve done more than you will ever know in the fight for what is right.’
I put my schoolbook in the basket of my bike and cycled through the streets to the park. As I walked over to the bench beside the drinking fountain, where Miss Ellis had told me to wait, the swifts were performing their displays of aerobatics, soaring and swooping as they caught flies in the cooling air of the late afternoon against the forget-me-not blue of the sky. The colour reminded me of the flowers that grew beside the stream on the farm when we used to go for our horse rides. I wonder how Najima, Marguerite and Malik are doing these days. I hope they’re still safe in their peaceful paddocks, eating the daisies.
It was a quiet time of day and the park was almost empty. The only sounds were the dripping of water from the drinking fountain and the occasional calling of the bulbuls from the branches of the fig trees. The park is still suffering in the aftermath of the locust invasion. The trees are leafless and the once-green oasis is stark and bare. The tyres of my bike whisked up little clouds of dust as I wheeled it over to the bench and took my project from the basket. As I sat down to wait for the courier, I flipped through the pages of the book. The sketches and details of each of the harbours reminded me of that holiday we’d had – our last one as a family of four. With a sigh, I closed the book before the memories it evoked could overwhelm me. I ran my fingers over the cover, tracing the outline of my name and the A+ that Miss Ellis had written there with her fountain pen in the green ink she favours for marking students’ work.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the figure approaching until she had almost reached the drinking fountain. At first, I thought it was an old, old woman, as ancient as the dreamseller, only dressed in more fashionable clothes. She was skeletally thin, bent almost double over the stick on which she leaned heavily as she took shuffling steps along the dusty path towards me. But as she neared the bench, she looked up and smiled. I’d have recognised those huge dark eyes anywhere.
‘Miss Josephine Baker!’ I exclaimed.
She sat down beside me, moving carefully, as if any sudden move might break her in two. ‘And you are Josie, my almost-namesake,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. I think perhaps we’ve met here once before, non?’
I nodded, hardly able to speak. Then I came to my senses and said how sorry I’d been to hear of her poor health and that I hoped she was recovering now.
‘Progress is frustratingly slow. They’ve opened me up so many times, I told the surgeon to install a zipper in me next time to make things easier for all of us.’ Her eyes regained a little of their old sparkle when she smiled. ‘But, as you can see, I’m just about back on my feet. I like to try and get out of the hospital for a little while every day, if I can manage it, to come and walk here and breathe the evening air.’