The Dress Thief Read Online Free Page A

time.’
    ‘Le Gal, whose mother—?’ Mémé bit off the rest. ‘You were alone with that slaughterhouse boy?’
    ‘His sisters were there. And Paul doesn’t work atthe slaughterhouses any more, Grandmère.’ The affectionate term ‘Mémé’ had disappeared for the moment. ‘He works at Les Halles, offloading the fruit and vegetables.’
    ‘So. Alone with a porter whose mother made her living on the streets.’
    ‘That’s not true. Sylvie le Gal was never … what you’re implying. Her business failed, that’s all.’ Alix would always be loyal to Sylvie, whose smile had cutthrough the uncertainty and stress of her first weeks in Paris.
    She’d been going for a job interview in Boulevard Haussmann and had got her
Métro
lines mixed up, emerging miles away near Place de la Bastille. Close to tears – it was her sixth failed interview in a week – she’d struck up the nearest avenue, searching for a street name. She didn’t see the pavement billboard until she crashed intoit: ‘Learn Tango in ten weeks’. A blonde head had poked out of an upper window, followed by a cheery, ‘Since you fell over my sign, I’ll give you the first lesson free.’
    Like Bonnet, Sylvie had been an unfettered spirit. Her skirts were too tight, her tops too low, but she was that rare type who loved men and women equally. She never got cross if you muffed your steps either. Just slowed thingsdown till you got it. But her school had closed, and with debts and two little girls to feed she’d taken to dancing at seedy
bal musettes
and in the nightclubs of Pigalle. According to Paul, she would dance with men and … whatever followed. What followed was a jump from a bridge, which confounded Alix because she couldn’t match happy Sylvie with death in freezing black water. ‘Paul’s sisters wantedme to stay,’ she told Mémé. ‘They miss their mother.’
    Danielle Lutzman wasn’t ready to retreat. ‘What will this Paul do when they’re twelve years old and one of them doesn’t speak? How will he teach that little girl about life if she won’t speak?’
    ‘Muddle through. People tell him to hand them over to the church orphanage. But then the river would have won.’
    ‘You talk nonsense.’ Mémé knottedher fingers. Because her speciality was fine needlework, she kept her hands soft withparaffin cream and from her slender earnings paid a local woman to do the rough work in the house. For all that, her knuckles seemed ready to break through the skin. ‘I wouldn’t take them to the nuns either,’ she conceded. ‘When I was young I went to Strasbourg to work in the lace mills. The nuns would visit,but they never asked about us Jews. Only the Catholic virgins mattered to them.’ Mémé rapped on the tabletop. ‘Eat. Finish your soup.’
    Alix obeyed and Mémé said, ‘You’ve a good job at the exchange, money every month. You might become a supervisor, catch a man who wears a suit to work, with a house in a nice suburb. Instead you want to get into trouble by a market boy?’
    ‘Paul and I are just friends.’

    ‘Pfah! Drinking wine in the dark, that’s “just friends”? Not in my day.’
    ‘Things are different now.’
    ‘And some things never change. Men chase, girls get in the family way and lives are ruined. You are all I have, Aliki. I want you safe.’
    Alix hovered on the brink of confessing her visit to Hermès. There was a speech ready in her head:
I don’t want to spend my life in the telephone building – “I’ll put you through, sir, please stand by.” I don’t want to marry a man in a dull suit. I want to learn the fashion trade and eventually open my own studio. Be the new Chanel, Vionnet, Jeanne Lanvin … open a shop in the 1st arrondissement
. A glance at the sewing table warned that rhapsodies would fallon stubborn ears. Out loud she said, ‘I want to go into the couture business.’
    ‘Work sixteen-hourdays and get crab’s claws?’ Mémé held up fingers bent like river