My dearest Fabienne,
I put this at the bottom of the box deliberately. If you hadn’t been strong enough to read everything else, then you wouldn’t possess the resilience of spirit that you need to read this. I think you do; but I know you often doubt yourself.
You’ll know by now that Xander, your father, was my nephew rather than my son. That I had a twin sister, Lena Thaw, whose existence I knew nothing of until 1940. And you’ve seen in the letter from my mother how that happened.
The more difficult thing to explain is Alex, Xander’s father. I met him one night in Paris at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal and even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I fell in love with him as he fell in love with me. But circumstances took us our separate ways. When he met Lena in New York two months later, he assumed she was me. They spent one night together. Xander was the result of that one night.
After many, many months, I saw Alex for what he was. The bravest, most admirable man I’d ever met. I loved him in a way I didn’t know it was possible to love: unfalteringly, unrestrainedly. There was nothing in the world like the love we shared.
But he worked for MI9, a British spy agency. On his last act of duty, the car he was in drove over an unexploded bomb. It was set off and everyone was killed. Including Alex. My world ended.
But I had Xander to look after. Thank God. If I hadn’t had Xander…
A couple of years after Alex’s death, gently and kindly and unfailingly, Sam was there. He’d always been there. I didn’t fall in love with him the way I fell in love with Alex, spectacularly and breathtakingly and all at once. My love for Sam crept up on me by degrees, no less real for taking its time to reveal itself. He understood about Alex and he never wanted to compete, never wanted to be anything other than who he was. And what a life we had together.
I hope you forgive me for never telling you any of this. Lena forbade me to. She thought she wasn’t worthy of a child’s love and so she wanted Xander to think of me as his mother, not her. And he was only four when Alex died so his memories of Alex were lost. Which is why I registered Xander’s birth properly. I just wish Xander had had the courage you had: to ask me about it.
Even as I write this, I miss you so much, Fabienne. You are Alex’s granddaughter in every way. And I hope you, some day soon, find a love that melds the two I had. So I repeat my mother’s words to me, as they are the only legacy worth passing on: Be brave. Love well and fiercely. Be the woman I always knew you would be.
Chapter Thirty-eight
On the day of the showing of the new Stella Designs collection, the house in Gramercy Park sparkled like the doyenne it was, wearing its history proudly. Tiny lightbulbs scattered along the floor of the hallway lit up a path into the front room where the show was to be held. In honor of Estella’s very first collection, Fabienne had decided to take Stella Designs back to its origins, back to the fearless and practical designs her grandmother had conjured up in a makeshift workroom in the Gramercy Park house, designs that had stood the test of time and looked even more spectacular now than they had back then. Fabienne wore the black velvet gown, the finale of Estella’s original showing, a dress that was anything but cowardly.
She’d realized, as she thought about Estella’s letter over the past two weeks, that her generation was far too cautious, that everyone she knew protected their hearts and their egos because they’d never had to face protecting their lives, like her grandfather Alex had. It didn’t matter a bit if people thought her collection was terrible. She was proud of it and she knew her grandmother would be too. Estella had survived failures and Fabienne knew she could do that too.
And now, in the room at the back of the house, which Fabienne had set up as the models’ changing room, everyone was ready. Fabienne smiled and said to the models, “Let’s go,” and a cheer greeted her words.
She stayed backstage for most of the show but, before the finale, she crept into the front room and took her seat next to Will. He leaned over and kissed her in a very unchaste manner and Fabienne saw the light of a dozen cameras flash to steal the moment.
He grinned. “Sorry, but you’re too gorgeous not to kiss.”
“Never apologize for kissing me,” she said, smiling too.
Then the final dress, in bold, gold silk, sashayed onto the runway, accompanied by a spontaneous and resounding burst of applause. As the audience stood to pay tribute, Fabienne felt the ghosts of all of those from the past—Evelyn Nesbit, Lena, Sam, Alex, her grandmother Estella and Xander, her father—cheering her on, embracing her, blessing her, before finally stepping away and loosening their grip on the present.
Thank you, she whispered to them, so softly that nobody would hear, but she knew they would. And with that, she tucked them, these people she’d loved, people who’d made her what she was, into the album of her heart, safe at last. And she took Will’s hand in hers.
Author’s Note
Harry Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit, John Barrymore, and Stanford White were real people. Harry Thaw really did walk into the rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden and shoot Stanford White out of jealousy over Evelyn in front of a crowd of people. Both Stanford White and Harry Thaw are reported to have raped Evelyn Nesbit, and Harry Thaw was also accused of kidnapping Evelyn, locking her up, whipping her and abusing her. What horrified me most about this story was that Harry Thaw was never prosecuted for anything he did to Evelyn Nesbit, or the other women he reportedly abused and injured. He was only prosecuted for the murder of Stanford White and then later for assaulting another man.
Why were the women he hurt not offered justice? Of course, the answer to that lies in a long history of women feeling too scared and ashamed to report such crimes and the legal system failing to recognize those acts as crimes. What I wanted to do in this book was to look at what kind of legacy it leaves for women if a man is able to terrorize them over and over again and is allowed to get away with it without punishment. Of course I can’t begin to know, but I wanted to try to understand. Even though I’m writing historical fiction, it seems to me as if much hasn’t changed; men in power are still able to say or do demeaning and disgraceful things to women and get away with it.
While the people are real, some of the experiences I’ve granted to them are invented. It was widely speculated that Evelyn Nesbit had fallen pregnant to John Barrymore—whom she attested to have loved—more than once and that those pregnancies were either terminated or could even have resulted in a live birth. What I’ve done is to extrapolate and imagine, as is the novelist’s prerogative: What if?
On a lighter note, many other characters in the book are real people, including Elizabeth Hawes, famous American designer and author of the memoir Fashion Is Spinach, and Babe Paley from Vogue. Many of the events in the book have their basis in fact, including the exodus from Paris in 1940, the SS Washington’s encounter with a German U-boat, and too many more to mention! Similarly, the buildings my characters inhabit are real, such as the fascinating Barbizon Hotel for Women, the London Terrace where Sam lives in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, and the Jeanne d’Arc Residence. Estella’s house on the Rue de Sévigné is an amalgamation of some of the hôtels particulier in the Marais district in Paris. MI9, the British Military Intelligence agency Alex works for did exist: it was formed in late 1939.
Acknowledgments
As always, biggest thanks go to Rebecca Saunders at Hachette Australia, publisher extraordinaire, who, when I telephoned her in late 2015 with a barely formed idea of writing about the fashion industry in the 1940s, said: Write it. That’s a book I want to read. I did write it, and the whole way through she was supportive, encouraging and, as always, perceptive in her editing. Her belief in the book made me believe in turn that maybe it wasn’t too bad, that maybe somebody would read it, and perhaps even enjoy it.
The rest of the team at Hachette are also fabulous. From sales to marketing to publicity to editorial, I am very blessed to work with such amazing people.
In writing this book,
I am indebted to the wonderful Margaux, my tour guide through Your Paris Experience, who walked me around and talked me through the Marais district in Paris, and the historical fashion district of Paris—the Sentier. She took me to the Atelier Legeron, where I was able to watch women making the flower and feather decorations for couture dresses, as Estella does in the book. Margaux also introduced me to the beautiful Théâtre du Palais-Royal, which I knew, as soon as I saw it, had to go into the book.
My sincere thanks also go to Matthew Baker from Levys’ Unique New York for a fabulous tour of Gramercy Park and surrounds and to Mike Kaback for an illuminating tour of New York’s Garment District.
I’ve always said I love a dusty archive and in writing this book, I am hugely grateful to Jenny Swadosh, Associate Archivist at the New School in Manhattan for access to the Claire McCardell fashion sketches collection and the André Studios collection of sketches, and for pointing me in the direction of the alumni newsletters which alerted me to the existence of the Paris School.
The National Archives in Kew has a treasure trove of information about MI9, which I used extensively.
I also read many books as part of the research process, among the most helpful of which were: MI9: Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 by Michael Foot and J. M. Langley; Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 by Hanna Diamond; Avenue of Spies by Alex Kershaw; Paris at War: 1939–1944 by David Drake; Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s by Anne Sebba; 1940s Fashion: The Definitive Sourcebook by Emmanuelle Dirix and Charlotte Fiell; Fashion Is Spinach by Elizabeth Hawes; Claire McCardell: Redefining Modernism by Kohle Yohannan and Nancy Nolf; The American Look: Fashion, Sportswear and the Image of Women in 1930s and 1940s New York by Rebecca Arnold; Fashion Under the Occupation by Dominique Veillon; Paris Fashion: A Cultural History by Valerie Steele; Forties Fashion: From Siren Suits to the New Look by Jonathan Walford; Women of Fashion: Twentieth Century Designers by Valerie Steele; A Stitch in Time: A History of New York’s Fashion District by Gabriel Montero; American Ingenuity: Sportswear 1930s–1970s by Richard Martin; and Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York by Nancy L. Green.
The quote on page 134 about beautiful clothes and French Couturières comes from Elizabeth Hawes’s book, Fashion Is Spinach, and is reproduced here by kind permission of Dover Publications. The headline of the newspaper article that Alex shows to Estella on page 148 is borrowed from the June 26, 1906 edition of The Washington Times. The poem that both Alex and Fabienne quote from is called Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep, by Mary Elizabeth Frye.
My family get as excited as I do about my books, and there’s nothing better than taking my kids to a bookshop and having them shout, at the tops of their voices: Look Mummy! There’s your book! Ruby, Audrey, and Darcy, I adore you. To Russell, who always takes every opportunity to tell everyone he meets about my books, thank you for your unfaltering support.
Finally, a book is nothing without its readers and I have the best, most loyal, most enthusiastic readers in the world. Thank you to everyone who has ever read any of my books. I hope you enjoyed reading this one too.
About the Author
NATASHA LESTER worked as a marketing executive for L’Oréal, managing the Maybelline brand, before returning to university to study creative writing. She completed a Master of Creative Arts as well as her first novel, What Is Left Over, After, which won the T. A. G. Hungerford Award for Fiction. Her second novel, If I Should Lose You, was published in 2012, followed by A Kiss from Mr. Fitzgerald in 2016 and Her Mother’s Secret in 2017.
In her spare time Natasha loves to teach writing, is a sought-after public speaker, and can often be found playing dress-up with her three children. She lives in Perth, Australia.
For all the latest news from Natasha visit:
natashalester.com.au
Twitter @Natasha_Lester
Instagram @natashalesterauthor
Facebook.com/NatashaLesterAuthor
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