Chasing Ghosts Madalyn Morgan (free e books to read txt) 📖

her stomach tightened every time she considered what might lie ahead. And when she thought about Mitch with another woman her heart hammered in her chest. She nibbled the corner of a sandwich she didn’t want and put it back on the plate.

Taking off her clothes Claire put on her nightgown and crawled into bed. She lay on her side and closed her eyes but couldn’t sleep. She turned over and lay on her back. She stared at the ceiling, terrified of what the next days or weeks might bring.

After being on the road for three hours, Claire and Thomas stopped for refreshments. Claire used the lavatory and tidied her hair before joining Thomas in the small restaurant. ‘I was surprised when Antoinette told me you were a lecturer at the university,’ Claire said.

Thomas lifted his head from reading the menu and a curl of unruly hair fell onto his forehead. He pushed the offending lock back into place. ‘Why?’

‘I had you down to become a politician after the war.’

Thomas sat back in his seat; a look of astonishment on his face. ‘I am far too honest to be a politician,’ he said. ‘Besides, I can do more good teaching fresh young minds that are eager to learn than I can trying to influence old men and women to change their outdated ideas. And, don’t forget, my field is history and politics. My students are fascinated with the Seventeenth Century, the history and the difference in the parliamentary set-up then, compared to today. Most of the politicians I’ve met don’t remember half of the political history they learned when they were young, and they don’t want to remember the recent stuff.’

The conversation was interrupted by the waiter who put a dish of olives and one of bread on the table. ‘Would you like wine, Monsieur?’

‘Do you have a decent wine of the region?’

‘Yes, a very good red wine.’ The waiter beckoned to a younger version of himself who arrived with an unlabelled bottle, poured a thumb measure into a wine glass and gave it Thomas to try. He inhaled its bouquet, took a sip, and nodded his approval.

The waiter motioned to his junior to fill both glasses. ‘Are you ready to order, Monsieur?’ the waiter asked.

Thomas looked at Claire, ‘I’d like sausage,’ she said, looking down the list of sausage meals. ‘Boudin Blanc, please, with mashed potatoes.’

The waiter nodded and turned to Thomas. ‘Carbonnade. And bring more bread, will you? The best part of beef stew and onions is mopping up the ale-gravy with newly baked bread.’

Claire ate some bread and potato, but her stomach was home to an army of sleeping butterflies that woke up every time she swallowed, making her feel nauseous. Putting down her knife and fork, she watched the handsome ex-Maquis fighter with long hair mop up the beer-gravy he loved so much. When he had cleaned the plate the waiter arrived, topped up their wine glasses and cleared the dirty crockery.

Thomas raised his glass, ‘To you,’ he said, looking into Claire’s eyes.

Claire lifted her glass. ‘Thank you, Thomas.’ She felt her cheeks colour. It was warm in the small restaurant. She’d also had too much wine. ‘I appreciate everything you have done, are doing, for me.’

Thomas waved the compliment away, swished the last of his wine around in the glass and drank it down. ‘We should go,’ he said, ‘we have a long journey ahead of us.’

‘What is the matter, Thomas?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Something is bothering you,’ Claire said, ‘please, tell me what it is?’

‘You will not find what you are looking for in the prison.’

‘I know. But I need to see the place. I need to see where Mitch, Alain, was. And if he did have… get close to Simone in there, I want to try to understand.’

‘And if Simone is a woman in the village who Alain had an affair with while he was laid up and unable to travel?’

‘I shall try to understand that too. But we won’t know until we find the doctor who took the bullets out of his leg, and the only way to find him is to go to the prison and follow the escape route.’

‘If we can find the prison,’ Thomas said, with sensitivity. ‘Many of the prisons the Germans commandeered were in remote areas.’ He put up his hand and beckoned the waiter who brought the bill on a small tray. Thomas replaced the bill with ten francs and put his hand up again to say he didn’t want change. Claire made a mental note to add half the cost of the meal to that of the petrol and the other food and drink that Thomas had already paid for.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A fierce wind drove spikes of ice and rain into the faces of Claire and Thomas as they stood at the barbed wire fence and stared with horror at what was left of the prison. Rusting railway tracks that had transported trainloads of prisoners, some of whom would never return home, were distorted and twisted, and the look-out towers, half covered with blackened snow, lay bent and broken where they had fallen when they were pulled down. The only buildings still standing were brick-built: the hospital and a round windowless building with a chimney on the top.

Most of the huts that had housed the prisoners - part corrugated metal and part wood -  were without roofs. Claire gasped in horror. Neither the wavy metal or the flimsy wood that remained was thicker than hardboard. The walls were so thin that they wouldn’t have given any shelter. With her gloved fingers like claws, forced between the rectangular shapes of wire, Claire seized the fence and shook it as she wept at the sight before her.

Physically and emotionally exhausted, her knees buckled and she slid to the ground, her