“If this works, you owe me a hell of a lot more than a drink,” she said to Lee and Iris before she left the mess.

She slipped up to her room and bathed. She washed her hair. She applied powder, rouge, lipstick and mascara. She put on her unworn olive drab skirt. She left the gloriously comfortable but decidedly unflattering paratroop boots behind. And then she made sure to bump into Major Mayborn in the lobby.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said to the major after colliding with him. “I’ve spent the day interviewing the men from the FFI and my head’s full of the story I’ll write for Vogue.” She smiled, standing like a model with her hand on her hip, showing off the figure that had been hiding beneath trousers and dirty shirts for too long, transforming herself into the Jessica May from the pages of a magazine. “I wish I could interview some American soldiers about their role in the liberation of Paris otherwise the women who read Vogue might start to think their men had nothing to do with it: that it was a French victory rather than an American one.” It was a gamble; he was either going to be furious, which was likely, given that the fight over who won the fight for Paris was ongoing, or he’d see that she was right.

“My dear,” he said, “I can get you interviews with as many soldiers as you like by tomorrow if you just tell me what you need.”

“Oh, but you can’t.” Jess actually pouted. “I’m not allowed out to the front to talk to the men because apparently women are better than men at attracting enemy gunfire. Which is strange, since I managed to survive Italy and Normandy, and get myself all the way to Paris without a scratch.”

“Italy? You’ve seen Italy?” The major sounded impressed and Jess pounced.

“Yes I have. I believe I’m one of the most experienced female correspondents in Paris. Why don’t I buy you a drink and tell you more?”

He agreed with relish and so Jess, in the bar at the Scribe, with the beseeching eyes of Lee and Iris looking on, and beneath the hard gaze of the few men who hadn’t bothered to seek fleshly comforts, dropped the names of field hospitals she’d worked out of. And she reminded him that she was the one who’d taken the photograph of one of his majors holding a little French girl, a photograph that had come, she understood, to represent the acts of charity the army was capable of, even under fire from the most brutal enemy the country had ever known.

“You’re the gal Stone’s been talking about,” the major said once she’d finished her tale. “I can see why.”

Jess kept her smile on, made it wider even, dropped her chin a little as if a photographer had just told her to seduce his lens. She overheard one of the correspondents at the poker table say her name and all the men laughed and she knew it would be all over the Scribe tomorrow that Jess was sleeping with the SHAEF PR man in charge, but she no longer cared.