Lotti had never ridden a motorbike before, but she was too full of emotion to pay attention to how it felt. The war had barely touched Armande. Over the wide stone bridge they went where she had sometimes fished with Papa, past a waterside park where Mama had liked to walk. Skirting the quayside where Albert Skinner waited with his eyes on the river, they entered the town, zoomed past the covered market where Papa had once bought Lotti a secret éclair, round the main square with its Gothic cathedral where they came for Easter mass, and with each familiar landmark Lotti held on a little tighter to Henri. On the corner of the square, Henri stopped a cab and ordered the driver to fetch the others, and then the motorbike began to climb up, up through steep cobbled streets towards the clifftops, and Lotti couldn’t breathe but clung to Henri as though to a life raft.
Moune’s house was the last at the end of a pleasant tree-lined street, separated from the road by a stone courtyard full of roses, just as Lotti remembered, with a shady garden at the back. Henri stopped by the side of the road and Lotti climbed down. She was shaking, but it had nothing to do with the motorbike ride.
That everything here should still exist as if nothing had changed!
‘What if she won’t see me?’ she whispered to Henri.
‘Why shouldn’t she see you?’ he replied.
‘But what if she’s not happy to see me? What if she’s angry? What if she sends me back?’
‘Then you’ll be no worse than you are now, will you?’ he reasoned. ‘Come on, Lotti. You’ve made it this far; you’re not going to give up now. It can’t be worse than that storm on the Channel.’
Gently but firmly, he took her by the shoulders and turned her towards the house.
‘You’re right,’ said Lotti. ‘I’ll do it quickly, before I lose my nerve.’
‘Want me to come with you?’
‘No, it’s all right. I’ll do it on my own.’
Lotti took a deep breath, then ignoring her jelly legs, walked fast across the courtyard to the house. The front door had been painted green, which was new, but the knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, which had delighted her as a child, was still there. Lotti grasped it, breathed again, then rapped three times.
A stern, middle-aged woman in a housekeeper’s dress and apron answered the door.
‘Yes?’
Lotti’s heart sank. The housekeeper was looking at her in exactly the same way the waiter at the café in Buisseau had, like she was some sort of street urchin. Too late, she wondered if she should have changed her clothes.
Well, she couldn’t do anything about that now. Lotti raised her chin and, in her most defiant voice, announced that she had come to see Madame St Rémy.
‘Madame St Rémy is resting,’ replied the housekeeper, coldly. ‘She cannot be disturbed.’
Lotti faltered. ‘Would you mind … please could you … could you tell her that her granddaughter is here?’
Madame’s granddaughter! Well, that settled it. The housekeeper had not worked long for Madame St Rémy, but Madame kept a photograph of her granddaughter on her desk, and the child looked nothing like this. Madame’s granddaughter was a pretty little thing with long shiny curls, pleasingly dressed in the sort of frock in which rich English people liked to show off their children.
She was not an urchin.
The housekeeper blamed the war, which had caused people to become desperate and crime rates to soar. Thieves would try anything to trick you out of your money. Just outside the gate, she spotted a rumpled-looking man with an eyepatch, who had clearly slept in a ditch and was obviously an accomplice.
Nonetheless, if there was the slightest chance …
‘Do you have proof?’ asked the housekeeper.
‘Proof?’ stammered Lotti.
‘A passport maybe, something like that?’
Lotti felt all the colour drain from her face.
‘I … I don’t,’ she gabbled. ‘I mean, I had one but … the thing is, I was on a boat, and it sank, and …’
‘A likely story,’ said the housekeeper.
‘Oh, please!’ begged Lotti. ‘There’s a policeman after me, and …’
The housekeeper closed the door in her face.
Dazed, Lotti returned to Henri and told him what had happened.
‘What shall I do now?’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘Wring her neck,’ said Lotti fiercely. ‘Kick down the door. Or scream and scream until Moune wakes up. Horrible old bat! The way she looked at me!’
‘I’m not sure that would help.’ Henri looked at Lotti appraisingly. ‘I must say, I don’t think I’d believe your story either if you turned up on my doorstep. Come on, the others must have arrived by now. Let’s go and get your things and tidy you up and come back when your grandmother’s awake. We’ll bring Mademoiselle Clara with us too. She can vouch for you.’
‘But Constable Skinner …’ wailed Lotti, her fierceness deserting her. ‘My uncle …’
‘Uncles and policemen be damned,’ said Henri. ‘I’ll protect you.’
And so back on to the motorbike climbed Lotti, and back down the winding road she went with Henri de Beauchesne, past the square and the market to the quayside, and there, just coming out of the taxi, were Ben and Sam and Clara and the dogs with all the things rescued from the Sparrowhawk.
Henri pulled up beside them.
‘Well?’ asked Clara.
‘Slight hiccup,’ said Henri. ‘We need to tidy Lotti up.’
Muttering under her breath, Lotti began to rummage through her rucksack. Was there anything, anything, which didn’t look as if it had been pulled from a jumble pile? And why did it matter? Must she really dress up, pretend, play respectable for a housekeeper? This wasn’t what she had run away for! Dimly, she was aware of Federico barking, of Elsie joining him, of Ben shouting … She heard a boat engine rumble then go quiet, footsteps approaching and then the dogs barking louder, a grumpy voice saying, ‘Well, Federico, well, Elsie, it’s good to see you again,’ and Ben sort of gasping and laughing, and at last she looked up and squealed because it was Frank, returned from Belgium.
‘It was something you said, Charlie,’ Frank explained, after Lotti had hugged him and Ben had shaken his hand and Sam and Henri and Clara had been introduced. ‘After I saw my brother’s grave, I got thinking. See, Jack always wanted a dog. And I thought about payment. I never did feel quite right about our deal. So I came looking for you and –’ he rummaged in the inside pocket of his jacket – ‘I thought I’d give this back and ask if I couldn’t have one of them puppies instead.’
And into Lotti’s hand he dropped the ring that had been in Théophile’s family since before the Revolution …
*
Albert Skinner missed the arrivals of Lotti and Henri and Frank for the most prosaic of reasons. He been watching out for the Sparrowhawk all day without moving, and he was absolutely bursting for the bathroom. He returned to his window just in time to see Lotti fling her arms round Frank.
Albert should have run, gone charging out of the hotel to snatch Lotti, waving an arrest warrant. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t take his eyes of the young man with the scarred face and tattered clothes standing with his hand on Ben’s shoulder, looking considerably older than twenty but alive, more than alive, actually smiling …
Was this Sam Langton?
And could his own boy, his son, one day smile like that again?
A motorbike revved, breaking the spell. Albert’s eyes flicked towards it and he swore softly. The driver in his helmet was almost unrecognisable, but there was no mistaking the eyepatch. So Captain de Beauchesne was part of this too, was he? Albert chastised himself, realising how the captain had fooled him in Paris. But now Lotti was climbing on to the back of the motorbike, and Albert shook himself.
He had come to France to do a job. He had disliked Hubert Netherbury since their first encounter, when Lotti’s uncle had ordered him to fetch Federico, and his dislike had grown with each of their subsequent exchanges. But his job wasn’t to like people, it was to uphold the law, which in this case meant ensuring the safety of an absconded minor.
Albert ran out of the hotel, past Sam, Ben and Clara, who looked aghast, and into the road where he hailed a passing cab and managed despite terrible French to instruct the driver to follow the motorbike.
He was in luck. Henri, with Lotti riding behind him, drove carefully. Albert’s driver, promised an extra tip for speed, did not. The cab screeched up outside the clifftop house just as Lotti climbed off the back of the motorbike. Thrusting a handful of notes at his driver, Albert jumped out of the cab.