The Storyteller of Casablanca (5)

I slip the floorboard back into its place – it seems to fit a little more easily now, so maybe the cache of treasure it was concealing was obstructing it before – and draw the rug back over it. Grace is sleeping soundly, lying on her back with her arms outstretched in peaceful abandon, none the worse for our morning’s adventures. I gather up the box and the notebook and go quietly downstairs.

Alia has set a tray on the table in the drawing room. The jug of iced water, spiked with mint and lemon, is misted with condensation and little cold drops drip on to my hand as I pour myself a glass. Then I curl my legs beneath me on the sofa and, with just one more brief twinge of guilt at snooping in someone else’s private journal, I start to read.





Josie’s Journal – Wednesday 1st January, 1941

My New Year’s Resolutions.

I, Josie Duval, hereby resolve to:

Write in English to practise for living in America.

Stop biting my fingernails.

Be nice to Annette, even when she isn’t nice to me.



Papa gave me this journal for Christmas. We get to celebrate it because he is a Catholic, although he says he lapsed when he fell in love with a certain beautiful Jewish woman. In other words, Maman. But he still likes to celebrate at Christmastime. We light the Hanukkah candles as well, even though Maman has lapsed too. Papa says it’s the best of both worlds and we’re hedging our bets.

I want to be a writer when I grow up, so this journal will be a good way to begin my career, even though I’m still not quite 13. I love reading SO much. Annette says I’m precocious because I always have my nose buried in a book. But then she rarely reads anything more taxing than the latest Hollywood movie magazine and I’d rather be precocious than only ever thinking about film stars and boys and hairdos.

I can read a whole book in a day if I’m not interrupted too many times by annoying things like having to tidy my room and go to the shops with Maman and Annette. When we left Paris, I was only allowed to bring one book with me, though. We couldn’t bring any of our other books with us, they were too heavy and there was already no room left in the trunk because of all Annette’s things. It was awful having to choose and leaving so many of my favourites behind. That was the only time I cried. I brought the copy of La Fontaine’s Fables that had belonged to Papa when he was a boy and which helped me learn to read when I was little. I’ve taken such good care of it that it still has its paper dust jacket with the picture of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse on it. I’ve read it so often that I know most of the fables off by heart. I’ll need to try and lay my hands on some more books now that we’re settled in our new home.

It’s been a very strange Christmas this year, now we are living in Casablanca. It’s hot and sunny here even in the winter and we have had very few presents. It feels like we’ve reached the end of the line, like if we take one step further we will fall off the edge into the ocean. I can see a glimpse of it from my bedroom window in the distance beyond the rooftops of the city, the wide, blue Atlantic. So near and yet so far. We are waiting here for a ship to take us to Portugal and then from there we can get to America. We just need to get the papers organised. Maman says it’s going to take an age.

Paris seems an awfully long way away. Which it is. We’ve travelled more than 2,000 kilometres to get here and there will be about another 6,000 to go to get to America, Papa says. I can’t even imagine what it will be like to travel such a distance, although I can picture the globe on the library shelf back home and remember how I used to make it spin, my finger tracing a line around the curved expanse of empty blue printed with the words Océan Atlantique. It’s a shame the globe was too big to bring with us. It probably would have come in handy now that we are world travellers.

I wonder where Uncle Joseph and Aunt Paulette and their boys are now. They are travelling too. They used to live in Alsace, near the German border, but Maman received a letter from them a few weeks before we left saying they had decided to pack up and leave because things were getting so dangerous for Jewish families there. We don’t know where they went. But I hope they are on their way to America too and we will see them again there, despite the fact that my cousins are practically the most annoying people on earth sometimes. When they used to come and visit us in Paris, I was always the one who was made to entertain them and share my books and toys, even though they are years younger than me, while Annette was allowed to sit in the salon with the grown-ups, sipping tea and looking smug.

Our new home on the Boulevard des Oiseaux looks quite like our old one in Neuilly, just a bit smaller and an awful lot dustier. But it smells different here, of sweat and heat and spices and the rotting rubbish that lies in the streets. I don’t mind it, but Annette wrinkles up her nose and looks like she’s about to throw up whenever we go out. It’s a lot better than the refugee camp, though, even Annette has to agree about that. Many of the signs here are in French so we can understand them easily. Morocco is a protectorate of France, or at least it was until France was taken over by the Germans, so now I suppose Morocco has been taken over by Germany too. Papa says there is a new government in Vichy, which has responsibility for here as well, but it’s not the proper French government. There are German army trucks on the streets and it feels quite frightening to see them, but they aren’t bothering much with people like us. Along with the Italians, they have to defend the desert against the English, who own some other parts of North Africa. So they leave the refugees alone, as long as we are just passing through and we don’t cause any trouble.