China Blue (The Dudley Sisters Saga Book 3) by Madalyn Morgan (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📕

 The next morning, after an erratic night’s sleep, Claire felt something, or someone, leaning on her. She opened her eyes and saw Aimée sitting on the bed, watching her. ‘Hello, Aimée.’ The little girl walked her doll up Claire’s arm and nuzzled her under the chin. ‘And good morning, Tricoté.’

‘Grandma say come,’ Aimée said, sliding off the bed. Waving her dolly in the air, she ran out of the room. Claire sat up and watched her descend the stairs on her bottom, calling, ‘Grandma? Grandma?’

Claire swung her legs out of bed, pushed her feet into her slippers and threw on her dressing gown. She went downstairs to fetch water to wash, but stayed there drinking coffee with Édith. ‘Aimée called you Grandma,’ she said.

Édith looked up, a worried expression on her face. ‘Do you mind, my dear?’

‘Of course not. It is who you are to her.’

‘Thérèse calls me grandma when she speaks of the baby. I think Aimée has heard her and doesn’t want to be left out. She is a bright one, this beautiful child of yours,’ Édith said, straightening Aimée’s bibbed pinafore, before scooping a soft boiled egg out of its shell and mashing it up in Aimée’s dish.

Claire watched Aimée as she dipped strips of buttered bread, which Claire’s mother had called soldiers, into the yolk of her egg in the same way as she had when she was Aimée’s age. When she had finished Aimée took the last soldier and put it up to her doll’s mouth. ‘Come on,’ she cajoled, ‘eat all up.’ Then she dabbed the doll’s mouth with her pinafore. ‘Good girl.’

Claire wanted to laugh at her clever, funny little daughter. Aimée looked up at her with wide eyes, and Claire smiled. Aimée had changed so much while she had been away in England. She could say lots of words – and she could put them together and make sentences. ‘Have you finished your breakfast, Aimée?’ Édith asked.

‘Yes, Grandma.’ Aimée closed her mouth, pressed her lips together and held out her hands. Édith took a flannel from beside the sink and wiped egg and butter from her face and hands. When she had finished, Aimée held up her doll and Édith wiped her too.

‘I think I’d better wash my face, before I go into town,’ Claire said, taking the bowl from beneath the sink and filling it with water. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said to Aimée, taking Édith in, as she left the kitchen.

Édith was making coffee and Thérèse, with Aimée on her knee, was looking at a story book with pictures of ladybirds and bees when Claire returned from Gisoir. ‘Ah, you are back,’ Édith said. She took the shopping basket out of Claire’s hand and put it on the table at the side of the sink among a pile of half prepared vegetables. ‘Take off your coat and sit down.’ After pouring coffee, Édith produced a tin with the German flag on its lid.

Claire’s eyes widened. ‘What the--?’ She looked at the side of the tin and read Qualität schokolade kekse, Deutschland. She opened it and laughed. ‘Where on earth did you get German chocolate biscuits?’

‘André. The last train he and Pierre sabotaged was being prepared to pick up some high ranking German officers in Blois and take them south. An SS guard, assuming André was an engineer because he was in work clothes, ordered him to get on with his job. And this is what he left the train with!’ Édith laughed, holding up a packet of real coffee. ‘And the chocolate biscuits.’

‘A perk of the job,’ André said, entering the kitchen from the hall.

‘André.’ Claire put her arms around her comrade. ‘When do we leave?’

‘Tonight, immediately after curfew.’ André took a map from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table. With one hand he pointed to the area that they were heading for. With the other he drew an imaginary line parallel with the road, but through the fields and woods. ‘We travel on foot as far as here.’ He tapped the map. ‘We stay away from the main roads because there are road blocks. But never mind for now. We’ll discuss it later when Pierre and Marcel get here.’

‘Come now, children, drink the coffee and eat the biscuits Die Schicklgruber gave you,’ Édith said. Everyone laughed. Aimée squealed and clapped her small hands – which made them laugh more.

It had been years since Claire had tasted real coffee. If coffee could be found in the shops in London it was Camp, which left a sickly bitter-sweet aftertaste in your mouth. She closed her eyes, inhaled the aroma, and sipped the delicious beverage. When she opened her eyes she looked across the table to see Aimée watching her. She smiled at her daughter and put out her hands. Aimée wriggled down from Thérèse’s lap and disappeared under the table.

‘Aimée, no! Walk round the table, please,’ Édith said. ‘You will bump your head one of these days, and we know what will happen then, don’t we?’ Édith looked under the table.

Aimée arrived at Claire’s side unscathed and held her arms out to be lifted up. Once on Claire’s knee, Aimée put her hand on her head and said, ‘No bang Grandma, no...’

Claire looked at Thérèse and they both laughed. ‘Sorry, Édith,’ Claire said. ‘We shouldn’t laugh when she does something you tell her not to do, but--’

‘But she is funny. And she knows it too, don’t you?’ Aimée giggled. ‘She knows exactly what she is doing. She is a little madam,’ Édith said, wagging her finger playfully.

Aimée put her hands up and Édith bent down. When Édith’s face was almost touching Aimée’s she squealed and put her arms around Édith’s neck. ‘Grandma!’ she said, making a show of kissing Édith.

That night, after bathing her