‘You don’t have to tell me, Maman, it’s all right.’
Claudette held up a hand to silence her and it seemed as if she were suddenly there, lost in the time when all this had happened. ‘I could not bear to go to him andleave you girls behind. Friedrich would have been happy to have you all, but how could I take you away from your father in England? It would have broken his heart.’
Florence spoke softly almost in a whisper. ‘So you stayed with him because of us?’
Claudette glanced at Florence with a puzzled expression but then nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I suppose that is what I did.’
‘And you were unhappy.’
‘I don’t see what else I could have done.’ Her eyes had grown wide and bleak. ‘But I could not even breathe without Friedrich … there was this eviscerating pain in my body. Every day I lived after that, I felt I might die from it. Iwantedto die from it. It sounds ludicrous now, but I wasn’t on solid ground. I held on to the furniture when you girls were at school or with the nanny. I needed to be tethered or I would fall apart. That’s how it felt. They were dark, dark days, chérie.’
Florence was shocked, her heart twisting for her mother, her eyes brimming with tears. This was raw and almost too upsetting to hear.
She watched Claudette sitting with a trembling hand covering her mouth.
The pain her mother had never shared or expressed was plain to see. It had hardened her over the years until the person she had once been became trapped behind a brittle shell.
Claudette was speaking again. ‘Looking back, maybe there might have been another way, but I couldn’t see it. I did what I thought was best for all of you.’
‘You sacrificed your own happiness.’
‘It was not mine to have. I was married …’
Florence felt her tears beginning to spill now.
‘But you’re right, I wasn’t happy. One day something collapsed inside me, and I took an overdose. Your father found me and forced saltwater down my throat until I was sick.’
Florence stared, her tears still falling, her breathing shallow. This was so much worse than she’d imagined, and she hadn’t known any of it. Had Hélène or Élise known?
‘It …’ Claudette paused. ‘It hurts so much to admit it, but I wasn’t a good mother.’
Florence’s heart twisted again. ‘Please don’t say that,’ she begged.
‘It is the truth. I am so sorry, Florence. You were my precious girls, and I didn’t know it. I see my failure in Hélène’s eyes, I see it when Élise glowers at me and I see it in you too, my darling girl. Too wrapped up in my own unhappiness, I wasn’t there when you needed me. I was never there. That’s why I sent you to France. Better that than rely on a mother who was present in body but not in heart or mind. In France you would learn to rely on each other instead.’
Florence didn’t speak, couldn’t speak. But, taking a breath, she rose from her seat and went to her mother, wrapping her arms tightly around her. Claudette was thin, much too thin, and Florence could feel her trembling and then her poor mother began to sob. Florence closed her eyes and continued to hold her. It had cost her mother a great deal to speak about the life she had hidden for so long.
They went to bed soon after that and the next day Claudette told her why Rosalie had run away. The family in Paris had been on the verge of a scandal for which they blamed Rosalie. In fact, it hadn’t been her fault at all. She’d merely been the messenger but was so unhappy she’d felt there was no choice but to go. And, of course, Rosalie had never got on with her strict strait-laced parents who wanted her to marry a suitable man and settle down. She didn’t want that, she wanted to be a dancer.
‘Here,’ Claudette said, just before the taxi arrived to take Florence to the station. ‘This is for you.’
She dropped a glittering silver charm bracelet into Florence’s palm. ‘Wear it all the time. Rosalie has the same one, with duplicate charms. She wore it every day, said it brought her luck. If you find the identical bracelet, you’ll find Rosalie.’
‘Is there anything more you can tell me about her?’
Claudette looked pale, as if her revelations the day before had worn her out, but her eyes were strangely bright.
‘Just that she was a cabaret dancer in Paris. Our parents didn’t know but she confided it to me.’
‘All right, but Maman,you don’t look too well,’ Florence said. ‘I could stay, help you here.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Claudette snapped. ‘I’m absolutely fine.’
And the look of irritation in Claudette’s eyes made Florence smile, glad – well, almost glad – to see her mother hadn’t lost the irascible self that had been her protection for so long.
‘I love you, Maman,’ Florence said, gave her a hug and then the taxi arrived. For most of the journey her eyes were blurred with tears and when Jack picked her up from Exeter station, she still could not speak. Back at Meadowbrook he asked if she was all right and could he turn on the wireless and she nodded. It was 12 April, and they heard the news that after twelve years as President of the United States of America, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died from a massive stroke.
Florence listened in shock. This was the man who had led his country through the worst of times to the impending defeat of Nazi Germany, with the Japanese in full retreat.
