Chloe and I walked from store to store, considering various options for gifts. They had to be small enough to fit within my leather shoulder bag as I’d be leaving my cases behind. The gifts also couldn’t be terribly expensive. I decided on a small flacon of Soir de Paris for Maman, a perfume I hoped she’d love that would remind her of home. For Miss Elwood, we found a beautiful brooch—a large cluster of green and red beads with two tiny pearls hanging below.
And then, on our way out of the jewelry store, I paused at a chaotic display of dusty, used goods. Inside the cabinet was a beautifully carved wooden box with the Eiffel Tower etched onto the top, not much larger than the palm of my hand.
“I’ll take that too,” I said quietly. One day, I would open that parcel from Giles’s commanding officer. Inside, I knew I’d likely find the St. Michael pendant I bought for Giles the day before his deployment, along with his wedding ring and the photo of us at the restaurant.
Through these little trinkets, Hughie could have tangible reminders of the milestones of our family life—the photograph, representing the brief moment we were all together, and all of our hopes and dreams that would never come to pass. The pendant, representing Giles, and his deep faith and hope. And the box itself—a little piece of Paris that would represent the city of my birth. The city that made me.
The following day, I had a difficult, uncomfortable meeting with Basile, who was unfazed by the wanted posters and was still adamant he was going to find a way to return to Rouen.
“And if Baker Street tell me I’m not to return, I’ll work the Success circuit here in Paris,” he told me stubbornly. “It seems to have more than enough challenges. I’m not going to let them evacuate me. France is where I need to be!”
It wasn’t my job to convince him—I would leave that up to Baker Street. We said our farewells, and I went back to Célestine’s apartment to say goodbye to Chloe. Before I made my way to the field outside of the city to meet my Lysander, she pressed a small scrap of paper into my hands.
“I won’t ask you to do anything that breaks the rules,” she said softly. “Give it to Miss Elwood or Mr. Turner. They can read it to check I’m giving nothing away. There’s just a lot left unsaid between my mother and me and…”
I took the letter and slid it into my pocket.
“I’ll pass it on,” I promised.
“I doubt they’ll send it. The rules are strict about contact with home when we’re in the field. But perhaps they can put it into my file,” she said. “I just need to know that I’ve cleared the air with her in case…”
“Don’t make contingency plans, Chloe. You don’t need them—you’re skilled, courageous and strong. When all of this is over, you and your boyfriend will come for dinner with me and my mother and son and it will feel like this was a strange dream we once had.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. You’re going to do brilliantly.”
After five full days of debriefing sessions, I had all but lost my voice. I’d been quizzed by familiar faces—Booth, Turner, Elwood, even Colonel Maxwell, the head of the agency and a man who had a direct line to Churchill.
“Basile should come home,” I told Maxwell.
“He is still adamant he should stay,” Maxwell said.
I jabbed a finger against the Wanted poster.
“Look at this likeness! Paris is only eighty miles from Rouen. He will be so much use to you here, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s arrested if he stays.”
I drew maps and diagrams, made lists of observations and names and dates. The minute I mentioned those rocket sites, high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Defense were called in, and that kicked off another round of questioning and more maps and more sketches and Elwood started bringing in cups of tea with honey and strong coffee loaded with sugar to keep me going.
I had a sore throat from talking and a headache from the thinking and an aching neck from sleeping on the lumpy mattress in the little apartment at Baker Street I’d been given for the duration. I’d left my SOE-issued clothing in Paris with Chloe, and I was sick of wearing the starchy, dated clothes Ms. Elwood had supplied me.
I wanted to hold my son, take a hot bath, don my own clothes, and eat several servings of whatever my mother would cook me.
“That’s about it,” Elwood finally said just after lunch on the sixth day, and I was so exhausted and relieved I could have wept with the force of those words. We were alone in an office at that stage and had just finished a very long session checking the transcription of my recollections of infrastructure along the Seine.
“Wait,” I croaked, and I fished around in the pocket of the dress she’d loaned me. First, I withdrew the letter from Chloe, still folded neatly in half. “She knows it’s against the rules, but Chloe wrote a letter for her mother. I haven’t read it, but she assures me it’s completely benign, and—”
“I’m sure it would be, knowing Chloe,” Elwood said, taking it from me. “But regardless, I can’t send it on. As you well understand, even simple words can be used to express covert meanings. What if it was a coded message that simply looked like a letter? What if it’s an encryption key? I’ll hold onto it though. If anything happens to her, I’ll make sure her mother gets it.”
“Thank you. And there’s something else.” I reached back into my pocket and withdrew the brooch. “A gift for you.”
“A gift?” she repeated, thin eyebrows arching high. “How on earth did you pay…”
“Best not to know,” I said, winking at her, and she opened the box and gasped.
“My goodness, Fleur. This is so thoughtful of you.”
“Just a little something to say thank you. I did a fantastic job, and no wonder, because that’s exactly what you all prepared me to do.”
“Well,” she said, blinking down at the brooch, then at me. She hesitated, then reached back down onto a leather folio on the table and swung it open. “I was going to give this to you later, but this seems a better time now. I met your son, you see.”
“You met Hughie?”
“Your mother was called away on business for a few days and asked us to arrange alternate care of him. I have no children myself, but the men here seemed to think that I was the only one of us qualified for such a job. My mother lives with me and was thrilled at the prospect so I found it hard to say no.” She rifled through the papers in the folio, then withdrew a tiny black-and-white photograph. “On the first day he seemed a bit sullen and there was a fair at the park near my flat so Mother and I took him for a walk. A man was taking photographs for a few pence. Hughie was having so much fun by then, I knew you’d enjoy sharing the moment.”
I was utterly bewildered as I took the photograph, but there was my son, looking off beyond the lens, laughing at the camera as bubbles floated on the air around him. Hughie was wearing clothes a size or two too big, and he had that little rash he sometimes got around his mouth when a new tooth was coming in. But he was holding a strawberry in one hand and he was grinning—his eyes shining, his entire face alight with joy. In the background I could see carnival rides.