Read The Silent Hours for Free Online Page B

that I almost died.
    In the days that followed his birth I remember seeing Paul from a distance, too weak to raise my head or hold him for a long time. I strayed from certain bliss to blind panic when I woke, imagining that the birth had never taken place.
    After a week I was strong enough to sit up in bed. Paul was placed in my arms and I looked down at him and realized utter perfection. This tiny being, created by me and my husband, was beautifully formed, a life in my arms, the opportunity to become anything, absolutely unspoilt. He looked at me with his wide eyes and all I could see was my own happiness reflected back in them.
    His skin was so smooth I spent hours stroking his arms, his chubby legs, tickling his stomach. Neighbours bought us blankets and clothes and I scrubbed the fabrics to ensure they were clean and welcoming. Vincent bought a rocking chair in which I could nurse him and I would quietly hum lullabies from my own childhood as we watched the sun rise in the early mornings. He would sleep with a little screwed-up expression, breathing softly and evenly, and then he would wake fully and look at me, his gaze resting solely on me, his mother. He had wisps of sandy hair, grass-green eyes, and he fitted so neatly into the crook of my arm.
    ‘… when she opened it she saw the child and lo, the babe was crying.’
    So Moses was found but his poor mother, on a distant bank somewhere, would never be sure of his fate. She would simply be praying to someone that her baby would be discovered, saved, taken out of danger. All she would know was uncertainty.
    I smile, look down at my son, but something is wrong. He is breathing but his breaths are different, quicker, shallower. He is thinner, his arms and legs longer, no longer the chubby little boy I know. His wisps of sandy hair are darker, cover more of his head. The blanket he is wrapped in isn’t mine. My breathing comes faster, great panicked gasps as my hand reaches out to pull back the blanket from his face. The eyes that look at me are black, the lashes are dark. This is not my baby. What have they done to my baby? What have they done?
    Arms shake me awake. Sister Marguerite is by my side, her eyes frantic. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘Are you in pain? What is it? How can I help?’
    A silent scream.

SEBASTIEN
    ‘I’ll go over the plans for the opening of the new branch with you today. We must start to arrange …’
    Father stands and smacks the table with flat hands, making us both jump. My mother drops the spoon for the jam. I am left hanging mid-sentence, my train of thought entirely forgotten. He clutches the edges of the table and breathes out slowly. ‘It’s this waiting that’s so awful.’ He scrapes his hands through his hair and sits back down. He looks at Mother, taking her hand in his, an apology in the gentle stroking of her wrist.
    She calmly picks up the spoon and squeezes his hand back.
    We both know what he means.
    I have attempted to convince myself that France won’t see any fighting and, though doubts edge in, I like it this way. I am not helped by Father insisting I am foolish to think so.
    These days, I seem to be finding any excuse to leave the house. The weather is warmer and, as I shut the door to the apartment, head down the stairs to the high street, I feel my muscles loosen, the downturned mouth of my father fading from my mind as I open the front door and look around Limoges in the daylight. Rubbing my aching leg (I shouldn’t have rushed the stairs) I turn left, always surprised by the everyday buzz of the high street.
    Thick coils of saucisson hang in nets in the window of the butchers opposite; peaches sitting plump and appealing under an awning in the greengrocer’s next door. In a small road off the high street, men on stools sit outside their houses half in shadow, smoking stubs and swapping news. One woman, a scarf knotted at the front of her hair, is beating a rug from a window on the second floor, clouds of