She looked around the room. With nothing left to do until morning, she sat on the bed and set the small travelling alarm clock for seven. She slumped back against the bed’s headboard and closed her eyes but couldn’t sleep. She sat up and stared at the telephone. Like a watched kettle, the phone didn’t ring.
With frustration more than anything, she laid down and curled up in a ball. Her eyes were tired and she closed them. A minute later, or so it seemed, she was woken by the ring of the telephone echoing around the room. She leapt out of bed, stumbled across the room to the dressing table and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello.’
‘Hello, Claire? It’s Thomas.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten to ring.’
‘I’m sorry it’s late, but I’ve only just got home. There was an accident on the road into Paris. Then, because it was late, Antoinette and Auguste insisted I stayed and had something to eat. By the time I got to my colleague’s apartment it had gone midnight. How was your evening?’ Claire daren’t speak. She didn’t want Thomas to know she was upset. She fought back her tears and took a calming breath. ‘Claire, are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m here,’ she whispered, ‘but I am leaving first thing tomorrow. I cannot stay here. I’m going to get the nine o’clock train to Paris. From there I shall go to the airport at Orléans and catch a flight home. I shall ask your friend, the manager, to put the documents Doctor Puel gave me in the hotel safe. You said you were only an hour away, and you would come back at the weekend if I needed you, well, I do. I need you to take the documents to Guillaume Cheval.’
‘I will do as you ask, of course, but why are you leaving so suddenly? Is it Alain? Was he with Eleanor Cheval?’
‘Yes, very much with her. The way he looked at her tonight in the restaurant was how he used to look at me. He loves her, Thomas. I know he does. It’s over between us. I shall return to England, tell Alain’s commander what Dr Puel told me, and that will be the end of it as far as I am concerned. Then I shall go to Foxden, to my daughter.’
‘Won’t you put off leaving until after the weekend? We can take the documents to Guillaume Cheval together. Afterwards, we can talk.’
‘No. I couldn’t bear to see Alain with her. And, Thomas--?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘Come in,’ Claire called. She glanced at her watch, it was 7.30. She dragged her suitcase into the middle of the room and turned to take her coat from the wardrobe.
‘Is it just the one case, Madame Belland?’
She spun round, ‘Mitch? How…?’
‘Did I know you were here?’ Claire felt her cheeks flush scarlet. ‘I had a telephone call in the middle of the night from someone saying he was a friend, and if I didn’t want to lose you forever, I was to ask at reception for the room number of Madame Therese Belland.’
‘Thomas,’ Claire whispered. Overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of her friend, she blinked back her tears.
‘Not a very original cover name.’
‘It was the best I could come up with at short notice.’
There was a second knock on the door. Mitch raised his eyebrows questioningly and Claire nodded for him to open it. ‘Your breakfast, Madame,’ the waiter said, looking from Mitch to Claire before crossing the room and taking croissants and coffee from the tray and putting them on the small table under the window.
‘Would you bring another cup?’ Mitch lifted the lid on the coffee pot and peered in, ‘and another pot of coffee - and bill room 103?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The waiter left and Mitch closed the door.
Estranged, not knowing what to say to one another, they stood in silence. It was Mitch who spoke first. ‘Honey, why are you here?’
Every time he called her honey, smiled at her, or looked into her eyes as he was doing now, Claire felt a sharp pain, like a knife piercing her heart. ‘I came to find you!’
‘And you’ve found me, so why are you leaving?’
‘Because I have found you. I wanted to warn you that British intelligence, Canadian military intelligence, and probably MI6 and the International Criminal Police Organisation are looking for you. Two military intelligence officers searched Esther’s house. They took some of your old books away with them. They searched our house while Aimée and I were at Foxden at Christmas. Then two bull-neck guys in civvies turned up at Édith’s house in Gisoir asking questions.
‘I had crossed the Channel on my old French passport, so when I got to Gisoir, André had my photograph put onto Therese’s passport. Two men, similar to the two who came to Édith’s house were in the Hotel Central last night, but we gave them the slip.’
‘We?’
‘I!’ Claire said, quickly. She didn’t have time to explain how she came to be with Thomas, nor did she want to. It was none of Mitch’s business. ‘I gave them the slip.’
‘That’s my girl.’ Mitch took a step towards her, but Claire turned away. She took her hat from the dressing table and put it on. ‘Documents proving you are not a traitor, but your psychiatrist in Canada is, will be delivered to Guillaume Cheval at the weekend.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Mitch said.
Securing her hat, Claire checked her appearance in the mirror, and
