Read In Falling Snow for Free Online

“We’re very close, Tom and I.” Suddenly I thought I might cry. I narrowed my eyes to stop the tears.
    â€œOh, that
is
young,” Violet said, failing to notice my upset. “And so you’ve come all this way, all by yourself?”
    â€œYes,” I said, recovering my composure. “Actually, the ship journey was fun. But then we were held up in Folkestone because of the Channel storms, then Boulogne, then Paris. I’ve been to the train station for three days running but there were no trains to Soissons. The line’s been blown up.”
    Violet laughed. “There is a war on, dear.”
    â€œSo I hear. I didn’t mind at all. I loved the station, just watching all the people.”
    Gare du Nord had been exactly as I’d imagined it, the rafters thickly lined with pigeons, moving about aimlessly, mirroring the people milling about below. The uniforms were there, the khaki of the British, the blue and red of the French who looked so gallant wrapped in their greatcoats with their caps low. Ordinary French people were scattered among the soldiers, their baskets and bags and need to travel in front of them like signs against enchantment. Porters were moving about slowly as if there had never been a war. They looked at their watches, at their shiny shoes, and cast sly glances at the soldiers.
    On the second day, having confirmed the train was cancelled again, I’d left the station and wandered the city. “We weren’t supposed to be on the streets unaccompanied, but how could I stay inside?” I said. “It was Paris,” I added, trying to sound sophisticated like Violet. And it
was
Paris, the Paris that Claire had made so real for me. From the way Daddy had talked, I’d expected the city to be in ruins because of the war but it was nothing like that at all.
    I went to all the places I’d read about. I started to feel as if I could be someone else, not plain Iris Crane from Risdon but someone who might be present at important places and important moments, someone more like Violet seemed to me to be, perfectly relaxed in the world. This new Iris ate lunch in a café in Montmartre called Chartiers—baked ham with cabbage that tasted heavenly, like nothing she’d ever eaten at home—and drank red wine that came in a little glass bottle and tasted like the fruit it had once been. She stood below the Arc de Triomphe. In the afternoon, she walked along a street on her way back to the pension, kicking a little rounded black pebble that skipped along in front of her merrily. The street was empty but for an old man in a cap and a boy playing marbles. She kicked the stone and felt she had found perfection itself.
    Later I wondered if that girl, that Iris, was still there on the street in the Latin Quarter kicking the stone, and I could go back and find her, and change the rest of the story. But of course, you can’t do that. If I was to be that new Iris, I would have to give up the old Iris. There would be no going back. There never is.
    On the third day, I’d been fully ready to go to Soissons. At the station I remember seeing another nurse in a wool coat like mine hurrying along the platform with a confidence I admired. She was older than me, perhaps middle forties. Nearer me was a young French couple, leaning towards one another, focusing on a bundle the woman held in her arms, an infant. They looked so forlorn, I was wondering whether I should ask them if they needed help when the man looked up past the woman and child and met my gaze. His eyes were dark and wet. He looked from my face to my shoulder, saw the red cross emblazoned on my coat, the red cross of hope. “Please, please, will you help us?” he asked in French. “Our little one is sick.”
    I went over immediately, with no idea what I might be able to do. “I’ll do what I can,” I said. I led the mother, whose gaze was fixed on the child, over to a