Page 63 of The French Wife

The mairie seemed quiet when she entered and went up the stairs; there were fewer soldiers and SS officers about than usual. Hans was sitting behind his desk and waved to her to come in.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked, shutting his office door behind her.

Hans looked dishevelled and exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept all night.

‘They brought forward the time of the round-up at the last minute,’ he said, his face haggard.

Shock washed through Amélie. Did that mean some people they’d warned hadn’t been able to get away in time?

‘Why?’ she asked, her mouth dry.

‘Apparently there was a change in rail scheduling. The SS needed to get the people to the station by midnight at the latest, so they did the round-up at nine o’clock last night.’

She stared at him, swallowing hard. She couldn’t reply; her mind was so full of panic and confusion.

‘Glock wasn’t best pleased. Some of the homes they went to were empty. Quite a few people had managed to get away. He thinks somebody must have leaked the information.’

Again, Amélie stared at him, thinking of the soldiers battering on doors in the dead of night, of terrified men and women carrying their children out to a waiting lorry and being herded into the back of it, leaving their homes for ever.

‘I need to go,’ she said. ‘Could you please tell Monsieur Colbert that I’ve been taken ill?’

‘What is wrong?’

But she didn’t reply. She left his office and ran back downstairs and out of the main door, ignoring the swastikas and the marching soldiers in the square. She hurried through the cobbled alley to the Boulevard des Promenades and crossed the road in front of the bakery. The building was still closed and shuttered up, but she needed to check.

Approaching the side door, a wave of unease filtered through her. The door was standing open and, as she got closer, she saw the lock was broken, the doorjamb splintered. Cautiously, she pushed the door aside and went up to the apartment, taking the stairs with her heart thudding.

‘Madame Lalouche? Monsieur? Suzette?’ she shouted.

The apartment had been ransacked. Cupboard doors stood open, broken china and glass was strewn around the floor, chairs upturned, feathers spilling from cushions, curtains ripped from the windows.

‘Madame? Monsieur?’ she shouted again, pacing around the wreckage, china crunching under her feet. She knew it was hopeless. How had this happened? Surely they’d already left when she’d checked yesterday at lunchtime. Or perhaps… Perhaps, she thought, her heart sinking, they’d just been hiding.

‘Suzette!’ she called one last time, tears stinging her eyes.

She was about to turn around and leave when there was a scraping sound from above her and she looked up to see a trapdoor in the ceiling.

‘Hello? Is there someone there?’ she yelled, hope filling her heart.

The trapdoor slid aside and a face appeared in the crack. A deathly pale face, eyes bloodshot, cheeks stained with tears.

‘Suzette!’ Amélie said, relief flooding through her. ‘Where are your parents?’

Suzette pushed the trapdoor aside, swung her legs over the edge and dropped into the room. Amélie took her in her arms and held her tight.

‘They took them away,’ the girl sobbed. ‘The soldiers came just after nine o’clock last night.’

‘I thought you’d already gone,’ Amélie said, appalled.

‘Our driver didn’t arrive, even though he’d been paid, so Papa found someone else to take us down to Narbonne. We were going to get a train from there to Marseille. We were going to start out at midnight to avoid the patrols.’

‘But I came at lunchtime yesterday to check you’d gone. Nobody answered the door.’

‘We heard knocking, but Papa said not to answer in case it was the Germans. When the soldiers came, they had to break it down.’

Amélie held her tight, imagining the terror of hearing the soldiers smashing through their front door, pounding up the stairs, bursting into the room in their heavy boots, yelling and brandishing guns.

‘When we heard them at the door, Papa helped me up into the loft and I hid in a gap in the rafters. They didn’t look in the roof. Maman and Papa didn’t have time to climb up. They were screaming when the soldiers dragged them away.’