Theo shuddered as an image of Ariane’s skull, darkly shadowed, the black quills just growing through the skin, superimposed itself on his memory. What had she done to deserve such treatment? What can lead a woman to betray husband, country, herself? Fear? Pain? Greed? Love?

He forced himself to concentrate on what the general was saying.

‘Justice, true justice is an element of sovereignty. It is impersonal, detached. The Republic, with calm and authority, must take it over from the people. No justice is done in passion.’ Even in private the Big Man’s sonorous tones sounded with a portentousness equal to a national broadcast.

Had there been a mock trial of Ariane with testimony of her guilt. Or a spontaneous outbreak of rage in the local community at the sight of a woman, his wife, who had … done what?

The murdered German officer had been her lover. His mind had made that leap at once, while he was driving through the night away from Bonnemort back to Paris. That was why his killers had left his body in front of her house. It was obvious. Micheline had implied that the murder had something to do with Henri’s death, but he dismissed this connexion. The outline was clear to him, but, like Micheline, he groped for detail to anchor himself.

‘Swift and limited.’ De Gaulle had eaten enough. He was crumpling his napkin with finality. ‘No, no.’ He waved away the unspoken protests of his guests. ‘Some people will get away with their ill deeds, but we need them. And loyalty is due to France herself, not to the inadequate individuals who represent her from time to time.’

That night Theo had not acted with the philosophic generosity that his leader advocated; he had turned on his heel immediately and left. Such was his rage at the time that he did not even speak to Micheline or Florence to say goodbye. Seating himself at the wheel, he had shouted to Dorchin from the yard.

The previous time he had left home, in the midst of disarray and defeat, he had been a happier man. The Germans had crossed the frontier on 10 May in 1940 and six weeks later France had collapsed. Theo had been wounded in the neck and taken to a field hospital from which the doctors had already fled. The wounded were evacuated to Bordeaux where, feverish and hallucinating, amid scenes of desperate overcrowding, he was unaware of the nightmarish reality taking place beyond his sickness. When, after three weeks, it was all over and he had more or less cured himself, he found that it was, indeed, all over.

He had always been a man with friends and even in the hospital a friend discovered him. Dr Maniotte, a pulmonary specialist who had a country home at Lepech Perdrissou, was still at work as a doctor of all trades, sewing up wounds, delivering babies, setting broken limbs. Somehow, he recognised his former tennis partner in the unshaven face and bandaged torso lying unconscious in a corridor. From him, Theo heard the news of the Armistice, the castration of the army, the occupation of the north. The country was now divided into two zones and there was no communication between them. Lying in fever, he had not heard de Gaulle’s appeal from London, broadcast by the BBC on 19 and 20 June. Later, as he lay semi-conscious, he heard diatribes against the Anglo-Saxons and the traitors who had joined them, and he understood that the British hadn’t yet been defeated. He decided at once to join the fight wherever it was, even if it had to be in the gloomy greyness of London.