Northern Girl by Fadette Marie Marcelle Cripps Page B

house?’
    ‘No, I have not!’ said Madeleine, feeling really agitated by now. ‘But what if I had?’
    ‘That’s enough!’ Martine warned, holding up her hand to stop her confused younger sister from saying another word. Then she grabbed her coat, telling Madeleine, ‘I’ll have to talk to you about this later. I need to go out now.’
    ‘OK, if you won’t tell me,’ Madeleine said indignantly, ‘I’ll just have to ask Simone when she comes back. I’m sure she will be only too happy to explain!’
    That had been the end of the conversation, and later, to Madeleine’s astonishment, the reason for Martine needing to go out had become abundantly clear. She’d bought a train ticket, so Madeleine could go home the very next morning.
    When Simone came home later that night, Madeleine was still so upset that she stayed in her bedroom and didn’t bother to ask her about Nicole. She thought she probably wouldn’t get an honest answer while Martine was there, anyway.
    She’d agonized about it all the way home on the train, and been unable to imagine what the problem could possibly be. But she made up her mind that she was going to get an explanation; she wasn’t going to let it go. Unfortunately she didn’t have Nicole’s home address, so couldn’t let her know what had happened. She wrote to the boulangerie , just in case, but never got an answer.
    What must Nicole have thought of her leaving without saying goodbye? she wondered now. She knew her sisters were expecting her downstairs, but she wasn’tsure she wanted to join them just yet. The events at the fair, on top of all this unresolved stuff about Nicole, had made her determined to force an explanation from Martine as soon as possible. She was jolly well going to find out what was going on!
    On this positive thought, she picked up the little jacket she’d been remodelling and tried it on in the mirror. One sleeve was set into the shoulder completely wrong. As she ripped out the stitches she listened for the sound of Maman’s footsteps outside on the road. Although, if she knew Tante Lucy, she’d be filling Maman in on all the local gossip, which meant Maman could be gone for ages. She hoped not; she wanted to talk to her before Papa came in from his workshop.
    Even though she had no doubt that Maman and Papa loved them all, and had done everything they could for them, Madeleine couldn’t help feeling that if only she was allowed a little more independence – and came up against fewer secrets – she’d be able to cope with things better, the way her friends did.
    The reason for the awkwardness between Martine and Simone was yet another secret that was being kept from her. Well, she wasn’t a child, and she wasn’t putting up with it any more. She was going to let them know that there were to be no more secrets in this family.
    At least Dominic confided in her. She smiled at the thought of her brother, only to realize with a jolt that she was guilty of exactly the same thing her family was doing. When the soldiers had been billeted in theirhouse during the occupation, hadn’t she lied to Dominic to protect him?
    ‘Why are you suddenly so jumpy and irritable?’ he’d asked.
    And she’d said, ‘No reason. Everything is fine. Really.’ At the time she was terrified that, if he knew, he’d kill the soldier who was tormenting her. Everything had certainly not been fine. But she’d lied to protect him.
    She cringed at the thought of those slimy Nazi hands, and the way they’d touched her at every opportunity. She’d been so terrified that she hadn’t even dared confide in her friends, in case it got back to her parents via theirs. What could Papa and Maman have done, anyway? What could anyone have done?
    It had happened after the German soldiers had taken over the bedrooms. Madeleine had been adamant that she wanted a private place to herself, so she had ended up on a folding bed in the tiny room next to the bouanderie , which was normally