‘Did you see her again? Did she speak to you?’ For Theo the refusal to talk was almost the worst thing. The answers to all his questions were there in his daughter’s head, if he could only spin the thread out of her brain.

Ariane’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘She won’t talk to me, Theo. It’s no good thinking it. She hates me,’ she said flatly.

‘What do you mean, she hates you?’

‘Exactly what I say. From the moment I took her from the convent, after you left, she hated and resented me. I can’t tell you what I endured: rudeness, insolence, mockery …’

‘Ariane, you are the adult and she is the child. You had all the power. How could she …’

‘Oh, Theo, that’s easy to say.’ She took her hand from his arm and strode up the steps towards the higher terrace. ‘You’ve never tried to look after someone else’s child, who holds you responsible for her parent’s death.’

‘But you weren’t responsible …’

‘Of course I wasn’t. That has nothing to do with anything. It was a nightmare, living with her. And the worst time was when the SS were here. Sabine infected Suzie. The two of them were like mad creatures and in the end …’ She stopped abruptly, turned round and began to walk slowly back to the house. ‘Anyway, there’s no hope that Sabine will speak to me. I would suggest that Suzie might talk to her, if I didn’t feel that their relationship had been strange, unhealthy. You’re her father. You’ll have to wait until she’s prepared to talk to you.’

He did not follow her inside. From the woods he could hear the creaking double call of a hen pheasant, reminding him of chill grey afternoons like this, out shooting with Henri. He missed him badly. The old grey wall, demarcation line between forest and garden, had collapsed at one point, the stones tumbling down the hill, the inner ones, newly exposed, shining gold, like the brilliance of flesh gaping through a wound. Neglect and decay; the absence of Henri showed everywhere. He could not for the moment think of what more to do about Sabine, yet he needed action. He had not come here from Paris to sit beside the library fire and read a paper. He decided to make another attempt to meet the Russian Nikola who had perhaps been with Henri when he was captured and could tell him how it happened.

Chapter Twenty-six

From somewhere up the slope beyond the cottage at Pechagrier Theo heard the rhythmic blows of an axe. He walked round the house, disturbing a couple of red-necked hens, which ran from him squawking, hopping with surprising agility into the branches of a bare fig tree. He passed a wired-off vegetable garden, where leek fronds, onion shoots and yellowing cabbages were scattered without pattern in an expressionistic muddle. A dog bounded down the hill, barking fiercely, followed by his master, carrying an axe, which he looked ready to wield at an intruder who displeased him. Like the dog, he halted at a distance to view his visitor.