The Girl You Left Behind

entitled to carry
     likenesses of French Army uniform. I will dispose of it.’
    ‘But …’ I was incredulous.
     ‘It’s just a silly sketch of a bear.’
    ‘A bear in French uniform. It could be
     a code.’
    ‘But – but it’s just a
     joke … a trifle between me and my husband. Please do not destroy it.’ I
     reached out my hand but he batted it away. ‘Please – I have so little to remind
     me …’ As I stood, shivering, he looked me in the eye and tore it in two. Then
     he tore the two pieces into shreds, watching my face as they fell like confetti on to
     the wet ground.
    ‘Next time remember your papers,
     whore,’ he said, and walked off to join his comrades.
    Hélène met me as I walked through
     the door, clutching my freezing, sodden shawls to me. I felt the eyes of the customers
     as I pushed my way inside, but I had nothing to say to them. I walked through the bar
     and back into the little hallway, struggling with frozen hands to hang my shawls on the
     wooden pegs.
    ‘What happened?’ My sister was
     behind me.
    I was so upset I could barely speak.
     ‘The officer who grabbed you that time. He destroyed Édouard’s sketch.
     He ripped it into pieces, to get revenge on us after the
Kommandant
hit him.
     And there is no bread because MonsieurArmand apparently also thinks
     I am a whore.’ My face was numb and I could barely make myself understood, but I
     was livid and my voice carried.
    ‘Ssh!’
    ‘Why? Why should I be quiet? What have
I
done wrong? This place is alive with people hissing and whispering and
nobody
tells the truth.’ I shook with rage and despair.
    Hélène closed the bar door and
     hauled me up the stairs to the empty bedrooms, one of the few places we might not be
     heard.
    ‘Calm down and talk to me. What
     happened?’
    I told her then. I told her what
     Aurélien had said, and how the ladies in the
boulangerie
had spoken to me
     and about Monsieur Armand and his bread, which we could not now risk eating.
     Hélène listened to all of it, placing her arms around me, resting her head
     against mine, and making sounds of sympathy as I talked. Until: ‘You
danced
with him?’
    I wiped my eyes.
    ‘Well, yes.’
    ‘You
danced
with Herr
     Kommandant?’
    ‘Don’t you look at me like that.
     You know what I was doing that night. You know I would have done anything to keep the
     Germans away from
le réveillon
. Keeping him here meant that you all
     enjoyed a proper feast. You told me it was the best day you’d had since
     Jean-Michel left.’
    She looked at me.
    ‘Well, didn’t you say that?
     Didn’t you use those exact words?’
    Still she said nothing.
    ‘What? Are you going to call me a
     whore too?’
    Hélène looked at her feet. Finally
     she said, ‘I would not have danced with a German, Sophie.’
    I let the significance of her words sink in.
     Then I stood and, without a word, I went back down the stairs. I heard her calling my
     name, and noted, somewhere deep in a dark place within me, that it came just a little
     too late.
    Hélène and I worked around each
     other in silence that evening. We communicated as little as possible, speaking only to
     confirm that, yes, the pie would be ready for seven thirty and, yes, the wine was
     uncorked, and that indeed there were four fewer bottles than the previous week.
     Aurélien stayed upstairs with the babies. Only Mimi came down and hugged me. I
     hugged her back fiercely, breathing in her sweet, childlike smell, feeling her soft skin
     against my own. ‘I love you, little Mi,’ I whispered.
    She smiled at me from under her long blonde
     hair. ‘I love you too, Auntie Sophie,’ she said.
    I put my hand into my apron and quickly
     popped into her mouth a little strip of cooked pastry I had saved for her earlier. Then,
     as she grinned at me, Hélène shepherded her up the stairs to bed.
    In contrast to my sister’s and my
     mood, the German soldiers seemed curiously cheerful that evening. Nobody complained
     about the reduced rations; they seemed not to mind about the reduction in wine. The
Kommandant
alone seemed preoccupied and sombre. He sat alone as the other
     officers toasted something and all cheered. I wondered whether Aurélien was
     upstairs listening and whether he understood what they were saying.
    ‘Let’s not argue,’
     Hélène said, when we crawled intobed later. ‘I do
     find it exhausting.’ She reached out a hand for mine, and in the near dark I took
     it. But we