At the same time, he said her name—“Jess”—and his voice matched hers.

“It’s my turn!”

Jess gasped as Jennings’ eager words crashed over her like a grenade, making her and Dan jump apart, the moment fragmenting into dust around them.

She hadn’t danced with Jennings and he had helped sew chocolate wrappers onto a suit so it was only fair that she say yes to him and, besides, the song had ended and she hadn’t danced with any other man twice, so Dan stepped away.

Jess had no idea what song she and Jennings danced to, nor whom she danced with after that, unable to escape because she was a woman and a rarity and also the star of the show and they would all notice if she went missing; she only knew that what she’d been about to say to Dan was “Come upstairs with me. Now,” and that as her eyes searched the room desperately for him, he had gone.

Gone to the killing field of the Ardennes. And she hadn’t had time to say to him, “Make sure you come back alive.”

PART FOUR

D’Arcy

Sixteen

So tell me what you do know,” Josh said, eyes following D’Arcy’s to the ceiling of the attic room in which they sat, cognac in one hand, inconceivable photographs in the other.

“Not much,” D’Arcy admitted, gripping her glass. “My mother, Victorine, was born in France. Her father died in the war, she told me, and she was raised by relatives, who put her into boarding school when she was a child; she rarely saw them after that. Once she finished school, she became a reporter, then editor for a magazine in Paris, worked her way up and ended up in Australia running the Asia-Pacific arm of World Media Group. I have no idea how she could be in this picture and I have no idea why your photographer might have it.”

She paused. “Anyway, it’s my problem, not yours. Your mother isn’t the one mysteriously appearing in famous photographs.”

“If it concerns the photographer, then it is my business. So let’s break it down,” Josh said, in his crisp, business-like voice which D’Arcy treasured at that moment because it made the problem seem impersonal, solvable, separate from her. “How did your mother end up with the name Hallworth? It’s not French. And how did she find her way to Australia; it’s not an obvious leap from working on a magazine in France.”

“More cognac first.”

D’Arcy held out her glass, unsure which of Josh’s questions to tackle first. She started with the story she knew best, although it was as full of tiny holes as a round of mimolette cheese. “I always thought she came to Australia because of some sort of failed love affair. She never really said why but her move to Australia coincided with my birth, which is why I put it down to love gone wrong. And she was given the name Hallworth because her father was an American GI. Another love affair gone wrong: her mother became pregnant with Victorine while unwed. Hence Victorine was put into boarding school and the family kept her at more than arm’s length. She was just one of the many illegitimate children borne by a Frenchwoman to a U.S. soldier in a war zone. And as she never really knew her family, they didn’t keep in touch once her schooling had finished.”