Daughters of Paris Read online

  Daughters of Paris

  Elisabeth Hobbes

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2022

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  Copyright © Elisabeth Hobbes 2022

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  Cover design by Lucy Bennett © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Cover images © Shutterstock.com

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  Elisabeth Hobbes asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008498153

  Ebook Edition © August 2022 ISBN: 9780008498146

  Version: 2022-06-13

  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

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for reading…

  About the Author

  Also by Elisabeth Hobbes

  One More Chapter...

  About the Publisher

  To Emma and Emma, my Charlie’s Angels. Xxx

  Chapter One

  Paris 1930

  ‘I can almost reach them; I just need to be a little further through.’

  ‘Are you sure we won’t get into trouble?’

  ‘Of course we’ll get into trouble. That’s why we’re doing this in secret.’

  Anyone familiar with the house hearing the conversation would immediately recognise the two voices as belonging to Colette Nadon and Fleur Bonnivard, residents of the property. They would be unable to see what was occurring, however, owing to the height of the wall at the back of the long garden. From the house itself this small, untended sliver of land at the furthest end of the garden was completely concealed by a thick curtain of rhododendrons.

  For two young girls it was a perfect place to explore.

  Fleur, who was skinnier, wriggled with her arms out in front of her and succeeded in slipping through the small opening where the bottom of the potting-shed wall had crumbled away. She gave a cry of exultation.

  ‘I was right! The door isn’t even locked.’

  ‘Quick, let me through,’ Colette demanded. Already sturdier and developing a bust, she could not risk wriggling through the same gap as her friend, and a fear of tight spaces made it impossible to even try.

  ‘It’s stiff,’ Fleur grunted from the other side of the wall. There were a few loud thumps and then a creak and a door that was almost completely hidden by trailing ivy and nettles opened just wide enough for a body to squeeze through.

  ‘I’ll get my legs stung,’ Colette said doubtfully.

  ‘Not if you pull your socks up and do it quickly. You really want to see what is here.’

  Colette bit the inside of her cheek. Always more cautious by nature, she was Fleur’s faithful follower, something which struck neither girl as odd, but over which adults often commented on darkly.

  ‘Count for me,’ she entreated, bending down and tugging her socks as high up her shins as they would go. ‘I’ll do it when you say.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Wait! From five or ten?’ Colette asked.

  ‘It really doesn’t matter,’ Fleur pointed out. ‘You still have to jump when I get to zero.’

  ‘I know but it gives me more time to think about it,’ Colette answered.

  ‘No, it gives you more time to worry. I’ll count from five.’

  Fleur counted down and Colette jumped on command, slightly surprising herself. She leapt over the nettles and through the door to land in Fleur’s arms. The girls stumbled back giggling.

  ‘Well done.’ Fleur hugged Colette then waved an arm around. ‘Look at what we’ve found.’

  Colette gazed around. They were standing in a long, narrow space. The Nadons’ apartment – one of four tall slivers in the same building – was on a corner and this spot backed onto the side wall of the building on the intersecting boulevard.

  ‘I think it was once a hothouse. There are parts of a roof with glass panes,’ Fleur said, pointing them out.

  Colette nodded then spotted something Fleur hadn’t.

  ‘Strawberries,’ she breathed. ‘There must be hundreds of them.’

  In the furthest corner sunlight streamed down against the wall that marked the end of the property and there were the remains of a planter, now overgrown with plants that spilled across a large area.

  Fleur plucked a couple. ‘They must have been growing wild for years. I wonder if anyone knows they are here?’

  ‘No one knows any of this is here,’ Colette said. ‘Mère and Papa don’t even know there is anything behind the rhododendron garden.’

  They picked handfuls of strawberries and sat on the ground to feast. The long summer had ripened the fruit to perfection and the girls devoured them enthusiastically. The ground was a mixture of pebbles, gravel, weeds and the strawberry plants, which ran wild and tangled among twisted bean plants. After they had finished eating, they lay back and looked at the cloudless sky.

  ‘This is like in the book Edith read to us last year – The Secret Garden,’ Fleur said. ‘Do you remember it?’

  Colette wrinkled her nose. She was not very good at English and consequently never very interested in what her English governess read. She had a vague recollection of the book and was fairly sure the garden in that was larger and more impressive than a scrub of land that had been ignored for years.

  ‘Only a little.’

  ‘Well, this can be our secret garden,’ Fleur said decisively. ‘Just for the two of us. We can come here whenever we want, and nobody will ever find us. Look, there’s even somewhere to keep things. We could keep books, paper to draw or write on, bonbons…’

  She crawled on her hands and knees to a cold frame that was still mainly intact and opened it. Half a dozen spiders scuttl
ed out in protest at being disturbed and Fleur hastily closed the lid with the tips of her fingers and wiped her hands down her skirt.

  ‘Maybe not bonbons.’

  Colette giggled at her dislike. Insects had never bothered her. She caught a spider and watched it dangle on its thread from her fingertips. ‘In a tin they would be fine, and I don’t think spiders would eat them.’

  Fleur lay down with her head close to Colette’s and her feet pointing in the opposite direction, like two hands of the clock pointing to twelve and six. They linked hands, giggling.

  ‘This is our own world. Just you and I. Sisters together,’ Colette said dreamily. She frowned. ‘I wish we truly were sisters. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Then we could play together as much as we liked.’

  ‘I know,’ Fleur said.

  Colette sat up. ‘You don’t have a papa. Perhaps you could say that my papa is also your papa.’

  Fleur rolled onto her belly, picturing Monsieur Nadon. A tired-looking man in a suit who came home late in the evening from his factory, he was always kind to her, more so than Colette’s mother, who was only concerned with her friends and Colette.

  ‘I did have a papa but he died of the grippe espagnole before I was even born. Tante Agnes told me he was very brave. He was her brother.’

  Colette thought for a minute. ‘Then we will have to declare ourselves sisters. Perhaps your papa would’ve been as rich as my father and you might have lived in the apartment next door, with the same entrance archway.’

  Fleur said nothing. At eleven years old she hadn’t met many people as wealthy as Colette’s father. Certainly not any with a grand house and a housekeeper; Fleur’s Tante Agnes.

  A shrill voice punctuated her contemplation.

  ‘Colette, where are you?’

  The girls rolled their eyes at each other. It was Edith.

  ‘What does she want? I have done all my lessons today,’ Colette said with a frown.

  ‘I don’t know. You’d better go and find out,’ Fleur answered.

  Colette lay back down and popped another strawberry into her mouth. ‘I’ll just stay here until she goes away.’

  ‘She won’t go away, and if you don’t go then she might come through the rhododendrons and see the doorway. Then our secret will be discovered as soon as we have found it. You can’t avoid going.’

  Colette rolled over reluctantly. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Colette, answer me at once!’ Edith’s voice came again.

  The girls squeezed through the door. Together they pushed it shut before pulling some of the ivy back down across it. From a distance it was as if it had never been touched. They crawled through the rhododendron bushes onto the neatly mown grass where a fountain stood in a raised pool, then sat side by side behind it, facing away from the house. When Edith called for the third time both girls raised their hands.

  ‘Here we are!’ they called in unison.

  Edith marched across the lawn towards them; immaculate as always in a pretty, green cotton dress, but with pink cheeks, a fierce expression and the manner of a Général d’armée.

  ‘Where have you been, girls? I have been calling for you,’ she said in flawless French. She folded her arms and glared at them. The girls weren’t exactly sure of her background, but she had apparently attended one of the best schools in England, which was renowned for producing women who were indomitable. Educating Colette was a temporary step for her until her parents found her a husband she could mould to her satisfaction.

  ‘We know.’ Colette gave her a mischievous smile. ‘I thought it would be fun for you to find us.’

  ‘Fun for you, perhaps,’ Edith said. ‘Madame is waiting to see you.’ Suddenly, she let out a shriek. ‘What have you been doing?’

  Both girls looked down at themselves then at each other in horror. They had strawberry juice stains all over the front of their dresses. Fleur’s plain blue cotton had fared better, but Colette’s peach muslin with embroidered rosebuds was ruined with red smears that would never wash out.

  ‘We were eating strawberries,’ Colette explained.

  ‘And where did you find those?’ Edith demanded. The girls looked at each other, at a loss to explain.

  Fleur was the first to reach for an answer. ‘There is a bowl in the kitchen. I didn’t think Tante Agnes would miss one or two of the small ones.’

  Edith darted a hand forward and slapped her arm. ‘It’s wicked to steal. Now, Colette, go to your mother in her salon. Fleur, go and find your aunt in the kitchen; she will have work for you.’

  Edith spun around and strode back up the garden path.

  ‘You didn’t have to take the blame,’ Colette said.

  Fleur shrugged and rubbed her arm. It stung and she wanted to cry but she would endure another slap rather than admit that. ‘I don’t mind. It didn’t hurt anyway. A little pain is worth it to keep a secret.’

  The girls parted at the garden door, Colette to go upstairs to her mother’s salon and Fleur to the room on the ground floor she shared with her aunt.

  ‘Secret sisters,’ they whispered, linking their fingers and thumbs.

  Delphine Nadon was already tipsy when Colette entered the airy salon on the third floor of the house, though she would deny the fact to her last breath. Fortunately for Colette, this meant that she was surrounded by a fragrance of fumes and perfume and in a good humour. She pouted and gave Colette a look of disappointment.

  ‘That dress was one of my favourites. I assume you have been in company with Fleur Bonnivard. I would never have allowed you to play with that girl if I had known what it would lead to. In fact, I should never have agreed to her coming to live with her aunt. If Agnes was not such an excellent cook, I’m not sure I would have.’

  Remembering the way Fleur had taken the blame, Colette flushed. ‘It was my fault as much as Fleur’s. She didn’t lead me anywhere. Don’t stop us playing together. She’s my best friend. My only real friend,’ she added under her breath.

  Delphine shifted on her chaise longue and took another sip of the bright pink cocktail she was working her way through. She drummed a glossy red nail against the side of the glass and gave her daughter a long look.

  ‘We do need to solve that problem don’t we, ma chérie. You do need friends. Proper friends in the right circles. Your papa makes excellent money now, so we should be mixing with the best families Paris has to offer.’

  ‘What about Rachel and Simone Halevy from the other side of the boulevard?’

  ‘Perhaps not the Halevy girls.’ Delphine’s smile tightened, as did the skin around her eyes. ‘Perhaps we should send you away to school. I loved my school. I made a perfect start in life.’

  Colette couldn’t deny this. Delphine had left behind the provincial Breton town where she had grown up and married an ambitious businessman almost twenty years her senior just before the Great War. Louis Nadon’s modest tile-making workshop had prospered, and he now owned an entire factory on the edge of the sixteenth arrondissement, manufacturing beautiful tiles for bathrooms and kitchens.

  ‘What did you want me for, Mère?’ she asked. Always Mère, never Maman. She envied the ease with which Fleur and her Tante Agnes got on with each other.

  Delphine beckoned her across. ‘I thought we could look at some magazines together. I have a new delivery from New York that we can compare to Le Miroir des Modes. We can pick you a hairstyle and choose some new outfits for the autumn. Would you like that, chérie?’

  Colette drew up a chair eagerly. For all that she loved playing with Fleur and exploring the garden, there was something about the photographs of sleek women in beautiful dresses that she couldn’t resist. One day she would be one of them, and when she was, she would not waste her days lying in a quiet room drinking cocktails. She would explore all that Paris had to offer.

  The conversation in Tante Agnes and Fleur’s bedroom was much less amicable.

  ‘Every time you lead Colette into trouble you jeopardise our situation,’ Tante
Agnes raged, whipping at Fleur’s legs with her apron. ‘How many women in Madame Nadon’s position would allow her employee to raise an orphan child in the household rather than terminate their employment? It is only because we grew close when we were younger that she allows it. Do you know how fortunate we are? You could ruin that for us.’

  Fleur looked around, not for the first time thinking that the long, thin room with a bed at each end and only a curtain to give a little privacy was not very fortunate. The concierge’s loge in the entrance archway to the four apartments that comprised the building had more space. Fleur sat on the bed with her head bowed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tante Agnes, but Colette and I like each other. We are friends.’

  Agnes Bonnivard sat on the bed beside her niece. ‘You cannot be friends. At least, perhaps you can for now, and only in the house. When you grow up you will move in completely different circles. Colette will marry somebody rich, and you will have to earn your living.’

  Fleur raised her head. ‘But you were friends with Madame Nadon. You just said so.’

  Tante Agnes sucked her teeth. ‘That was during wartime. Things were different. Usually a woman like her would not grow close to a woman she employed. Thankfully, we do not have to suffer that anymore. France is at peace. Europe is at peace.’