The Paris Secret Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART ONE: Skye One

  Two

  PART TWO: Kat Three

  PART THREE: Skye Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  PART FOUR: Kat Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  PART FIVE: Skye Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  PART SIX: Kat Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  PART SEVEN: Skye Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  PART EIGHT: Kat Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  PART NINE: Margaux Twenty-Seven

  PART TEN: Skye Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  PART ELEVEN: Kat Thirty-One

  PART TWELVE: Skye Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  PART THIRTEEN: Nicholas Thirty-Five

  PART FOURTEEN: Kat Thirty-Six

  PART FIFTEEN: Margaux Thirty-Seven

  PART SIXTEEN: Kat Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Guide Discussion Questions

  The Story Behind the Book

  Discover More

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  High Praise for Natasha Lester

  Other Books by Natasha Lester

  More sweeping historical fiction featuring extraordinary women

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Natasha Lester

  Reading group guide copyright © 2020 by Natasha Lester and Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Cover design and illustration by Daniela Medina. Cover photographs © Trevillion; Shutterstock. Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Originally published in March 2020 by Hachette Australia

  First US edition: September 2020

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The quotation [here]: from Circe by Madeline Miller, copyright © 2018. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The quotation [here]: from the book Spitfire Women of World War II by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd © 2007 Giles Whittell.

  The quotation [here]: from A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson copyright © 2016. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The quotation [here]: from A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE by Sarah Helm is reprinted by permission of Little, Brown Book Group Ltd © 2005.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935796

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-1728-8 (trade paperback), 978-1-5387-1727-1 (ebook)

  E3-20200806-DA-NF-ORI

  To Audrey, the dark-haired heroine in my life.

  You are boundless. I hope you always believe this.

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  Prologue

  PARIS, 12 FEBRUARY 1947

  In a grand townhouse at 30 Avenue Montaigne, Margaux Jourdan is helped into an ivory silk shantung jacket with a padded and flared peplum, and a pleated black wool skirt. The skirt falls, shockingly, all the way to mid-calf—such an excess of fabric for a post-ration world. A strand of pearls is placed around her neck, and she is finished off with a wide-brimmed hat and black gloves. Even after the desecration of war, a woman’s hands are still too startling to be left unclothed.

  Madame Raymonde spins Margaux around as if she were a ballerina in a music box and allows her chin to fall just once into a satisfied nod. She indicates with her arm that Margaux should step through the doorway of the cabine and into the salon.

  Thus, the legendary Dior Bar Suit is conveyed via Margaux’s body to an unsuspecting world.

  In the grand salon, a crowd of elegant Parisians—Jean Cocteau, Michel de Brunhoff from Vogue and Marie-Louise Bousquet from Harper’s Bazaar—sit shoulder to shoulder with barely any room between them for breath. Some people are standing against the wall, and others line the staircase—such has been the demand for tickets to this show, which canny profiteers have sold to the clamorous for more than it costs to buy black-market butter.

  The salon wears its muted palette of pearl gray and white as subtly as a concealed zipper. The Louis XVI medallion chairs, the gilt picture frames topped with fontanges bows and the Belle Epoque chandeliers all seem to declare that time has stopped and it would be best to pay attention. Unfurled fans rustle like premature applause, and the air is scented with perfume and Gauloises and anticipation. Everywhere, skins are atingle.

  As Margaux glides along she hears gasps, sees heads lean forward and hands twitch as if they wish to skim the en huit curves of her suit. She completes her circuit and passes through the gray satin curtain, behind which stands Christian Dior—the man who stitches seams with magic, whose gowns transcend fashion. Eighty years hence, should one be asked to name a couturier, his will be the first name spoken. But that is all still to come.

  Christian gifts Margaux a smile. The show continues. Nobody needs to declare that it is spectacular; it is a fact known without words.

  The finale is, naturally, a wedding gown. Margaux stands perfectly still while she is dressed. Then she steps back into the salon and the collective intake of breath is so violent it almost depletes the room of oxygen. For Margaux appears to be wearing a full-blown white rose plucked at its moment of true perfection. Or at least that is the illusion she purveys in her voluminous skirt: a lavishness—no, a prodigality—of silk billowing like optimism around her before funneling in at the waist to a span of just twenty inches—a requirement for any Christian Dior model.

  Of course, none of the spectators know that Margaux only possesses such a waist because of years of deprivation; that it is a legacy of a time when such a gown would have been as shocking as the sun appearing in the midnight sky. But it does no one any good to recall what can never be undone, so Margaux concentrates on her feet, walking slowly enough for
the crowd to apprehend that what they are seeing is extraordinary, but also fast enough that she is gone too soon, leaving yearning cast behind her like a shadow.

  There is hardly enough space amongst all the people for the gown’s stupendous skirt and it brushes against one of the tall, white columned ashtrays. Nobody except Margaux notices the ash spill to the floor. Nobody notices either that it is minus fourteen degrees outside and that Paris has been shivering through a winter of postwar electricity rations and coal shortages. Christian’s dress has the power of erasure.

  As she exits the salon, the applause is so thunderous it could rouse the dead. But Margaux knows nothing will ever rouse her dead.

  The mannequins return to the salon and stand in a line. Christian—or Tian as he is known to Margaux and a few select others—bows and accepts his congratulations.

  He singles out Margaux, still wearing the wedding dress despite the fact that she will never be a bride, raises her hand to his lips and kisses it. “Magnifique,” he says.

  Christian’s sister Catherine Dior kisses Margaux’s cheeks. “You were magnifique, chérie.”

  Carmel Snow from American Harper’s Bazaar steps forward. Her fingertips whisper rapturously against the silk of Margaux’s skirt. “Dear Christian,” she says, “your dresses have such a new look.”

  And Margaux knows, as if she were suddenly able to divine the future, that this is how Christian’s collection will be spoken of from now on. A New Look, for a new world. A world in which death and loss and heartbreak will hereafter become muted emotions rather than a rawness tearing always at one’s skin. They will not be a way of life, as they have been throughout these last years of war. The New Look will be the perfect amnesiac for a generation that has survived the war and does not wish to recall anything of it.

  Margaux is the only one who remembers. Skye and Liberty and Nicholas and O’Farrell are all gone now, in different ways. She will never say their names again, not to anyone. Nobody wishes to hear the names of the victims. Just as nobody wishes to understand that Margaux’s waist is tiny because she is a victim too.

  Catherine slips her arm into Margaux’s. “Here, chérie. Let us raise a glass of champagne to . . .” She hesitates. “The future?”

  That word will always have a question mark after it. So Margaux does not drink to the future. Instead she lifts her glass to all of them—herself, Catherine, Skye, Liberty, Nicholas and O’Farrell. As she does so, she feels the spirits crowding around her, pleading with her, as they do every night in her dreams. But just as there was nothing she could do the last time she saw each of them, there is nothing she can do for them now. Except drink champagne, smile and step forward with her New Look into this terrible new world that she cannot comprehend.

  PART ONE

  Skye

  . . . in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.

  —Madeline Miller, Circe

  One

  CORNWALL, AUGUST 1928

  I can see your underwear.”

  Skye Penrose knew that the ordinary response of a ten-year-old girl to such a statement would be to stop cartwheeling along Porthleven pier like a gamboling star and restore her skirt to its proper position. Instead she paused to change direction, then turned two perfect cartwheels toward the boy who’d spoken. In the rush of her upward trajectory, she lunged at him and gave his trousers a swift tug, dislodging them from his waist and popping at least one button in the process.

  “Now I can see yours,” she said, giggling. She’d meant to run away immediately to escape his likely anger, but his face was so astonished—eyes wide, his mouth a well-rounded “O,” just the right size for throwing in a toffee if only she had one—that she grinned and said, “I’m Skye.”

  He reinstated his trousers, stuttering, “I’m Nicholas Crawford. Pleased to meet you.” He spoke oddly: his words sharp-angled rather than round, emphasis falling on different vowels so that the familiar became strange.

  “I thought it only fair, if we’re going to be friends, that neither of us should know more about the other,” Skye said. “So I had to see your underwear too.”

  Nicholas Crawford nodded as if that made perfect sense. He was taller than Skye, with near-black hair and striking blue-gray eyes, like the sea on an uncertain day. His clothes were clean and pressed, not grubby with play like Skye’s.

  “Friends,” he repeated.

  “As long as you can keep my secrets.”

  Curiosity shimmered aquamarine in his eyes. “What sort of secrets are they?”

  “The best ones. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  She grabbed his hand and took off. He didn’t hesitate, didn’t protest that he ought to tell his mother where he was going, didn’t say he couldn’t be friends with someone who’d robbed his trousers of a button or two. He ran with her, keeping pace, even though, given his accent and demeanor, he must be from somewhere far from Cornwall—a place where, most likely, one didn’t often run free. Together, they turned right in front of the town hall and raced along the sand until an apparently impenetrable rock wall blocked the way.

  “Through here,” Skye said, showing him a gap just big enough to crawl through.

  On the other side of the wall, his mouth opened again, and she knew he was wonderstruck, just as she’d hoped he would be.

  “You’re the first person I’ve brought here,” she said.

  “Why me?”

  She considered how to say it: I’ve never met anyone so wide-eyed. It wouldn’t sound right. “I thought you’d like it,” she said.

  They both turned full circle to take in the white-laced sea hurling itself against the cliff face to the left of them, the curve of the bay where the waves simmered in the dropped wind, the cave behind them, which was craggy and dark and promised feats of great derring-do.

  “It’s all mine,” Skye said proudly. “See that house up there.” She pointed to the clifftop, where a weather-thrashed cottage sank its toes into the ground, holding on, just. “That’s where I live with my mother. And my sister. The only way you can get to this cove is through the gap in the rock wall or the path that leads down from the house. So it’s mine. And now yours too.”

  Nicholas furrowed his brow. His hand moved to his pocket and he pulled out a watch. “If you’re going to share your cove with me, then I’ll share this with you.” He handed it to her. “It was my father’s. And his father’s too.”

  Skye ran a finger over the engraved gold of the case before opening the cover. Inside, she found dignified Roman numerals and a strangely misshapen half-moon.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked.

  “Up there.” Nicholas pointed to the sky.

  “You don’t need to share this.” She passed the pocket watch back to him, understanding it was the most important thing he possessed.

  “I want to. You can have it one day every week.”

  His tone was firm. This well-dressed boy who didn’t seem to have ever set foot on a Cornish beach had strength of will. And he could run. And he liked her cove.

  “That means you’ll have to come back tomorrow to get it,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Do you want to see inside the cave?”

  He nodded again.

  * * *

  Skye stood on the clifftop, Nicholas’s pocket watch tucked safely inside a handkerchief, and watched her new friend squeeze through the gap in the rocks and trudge along the sand below. Just before he turned toward town, he looked back and waved. Skye performed a rapid series of cartwheels that she thought might make him smile. Then she went in to dinner.

  Her sister, Liberty, who was younger than Skye by one year, pounced on her the moment she entered the cottage.

  “Where were you?” Liberty whined.

  “At the beach,” Skye said.

  Liberty screwed up her face. “You’re always at the beach.”

 
“Then you could easily have found me.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  Before she could remind her sister that the kitchen, not Skye, was the source of food, she saw, over Liberty’s shoulder, the Snakes and Ladders board set out on the table. Gold and green snakes wriggled toward illustrations of naughty children and Skye realized, her stomach twisting like the snakes, that she should be the subject of one of those drawings. She’d promised Liberty a game of Snakes and Ladders that afternoon. But she’d forgotten about it in the thrill of finding someone who loved the cove as much as she did—unlike her sister.

  Liberty followed Skye’s eyes to the game. She flounced over and thrust it off the table. The dice clattered to the floor, momentarily obscuring the gentle hum of voices from the room next door where their mother was busy with one of her clients.

  “I’ll make you a cup of tea,” Skye said. “And then we can play.”

  Liberty didn’t reply and Skye thought she might march upstairs and sulk in her room as she was wont to do. But then she nodded and peace was momentarily restored. They sipped their tea as they played and Skye said nothing when Liberty, in order to ascend a ladder, miscounted the number of squares she was supposed to move. She said nothing either when Liberty protested that Skye had miscounted and needed to slide down a snake. Liberty won.

  * * *

  The following morning, Skye was up at dawn and in her swimsuit, waiting impatiently for Nicholas, his pocket watch held tight and safe in her hand. She sat in the window seat in the parlor, staring at her beloved ocean, willing him to ignore propriety and come now, although it was too early even for breakfast. When Liberty appeared downstairs an hour later, she scowled at Skye’s swimsuit and let fly with a spiteful foot, which Skye—who’d had plenty of practice—dodged. Then there was a knock at the door and Skye beamed. He too must prefer her cove to breakfast.