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her nose and forces the liquid down her throat, the way my cousins swallow foul medicine. With a shiver, she says, “Good Lord!”
    Madame LaRoche quickly crosses herself.
    “I’m sorry,” Denise tells her. “I assumed this was coffee.”
    “That, Denise, is
ersatz
coffee, a fake substitute made from chicory. It is as close as you will come to real coffee for the remainder of your stay in France. Now you know what to expect. Imagine if you had reacted that way in a crowded bistro?”
    Denise blushes. “I suppose you’re right about that.”
    “You would be surprised by what you can grow accustomed to over time. Eventually you might well enjoy chicory coffee.”
    “I’ll drink the stuff if Adele will.”
    The dare leaves me no choice but to drink the coffee to the last drop. Near the end I run short of breath, but I pull through. Fake coffee isn’t as unappetizing as Denise made it out to be, but for all I know it tastes like the real stuff. My aunt and I are tea drinkers.
    “Wonderful. Adele likes ersatz coffee already,” Madame LaRoche says.
    The door to the outside opens. Bishop and a few other men come in with supplies. I wait for Pierre to join them, but the door swings closed and stays that way.
    “Ladies, are you prepared to leave for Paris? You will report to your SOE circuit leader there and follow his instructions. Do you have his contact information?”
    “Of course,” Denise says. “But when will I get to fire my weapons? Winston Churchill himself ordered the SOE to ‘set Europe ablaze.’”
    “Concentrate on your radio duties, Denise.” Bishop scratches the crook in the bridge of his nose, a memento from his early boxing career, as if to shield an out-of-character smile. “And don’t be so trigger happy.”
    She grumbles, “Oh, bother—,” and my immediate thought isof the Winnie the Pooh stuffed bear at the end of my cousin’s bed, his arm forever held in a cheery wave that greeted me on my way to and from my bedroom.
    Bishop says, “Take a few moments to study the devices on the table. Be prepared to employ any or all of them during your time in the field.”
    “These little lovelies are mine.” Denise reaches for a pair of clunky women’s shoes that aren’t little or lovely. From the wedge heel she removes a small, hidden blade. “I could kick some arse with these. Quite literally.”
    During our training we were introduced to some of the SOE’s gadgets. I loved the ones with a surprising twist. Explosives disguised as Chianti bottles, or cigarettes, or lumps of coal. Shaving cream and toothpaste containers with secret compartments that hid codes or microprints. Tins of “foot powder” filled with an irritating itching powder.
    Bishop hands Denise and me our identification papers and ration cards.
    “Oh, would you look at my photo. It’s dreadful!” Denise says, waving her identity card in my face. “How’s yours?”
    Cameras usually capture me at my worst. In the final group photo before I left school, every girl in the front row wore her prettiest smile. And there I sat at the end of the line, my face contorted unattractively in a sneeze. My
carte d’identité
breaks the photo curse. With my head tilted just so, and a perfect blend of highlight and shadow, I look sophisticated. Like a film star.
    “I like mine,” I say.
    When I show Denise, she clicks her tongue in annoyance. “Yours is much nicer than mine. I should have asked for a retake.”
    In my hands I hold a new identity. Physical proof that I’vebecome someone else. The cards are forgeries of course, but fingerprinted, stamped, signed, and dated, mine looks so official. So real.
    Bishop ushers us outside.
    Things are stepping up fast. Are we really about to be cut loose, to ride away on our own, with no supervision or support to fall back on? A pang of guilt comes over me. Somehow I fooled a bunch of high-ranking people into believing not only that I’m older than seventeen, but also that I’m capable