Suzie leaned forward and pulled down the covers a little so that she could see more of Sabine’s face. The swelling round her eyes had subsided a little and the bandage on her head had been removed, showing where her hair had been cut short to dress her scalp. She was unrecognisable as the Sabine with the moon face and the cloud of hair, who had rushed Suzie from the pigsty to the chapel when she arrived at Bonnemort.

‘It was him, wasn’t it?’

Sabine nodded. Suzie stroked the hand that was curled on the edge of the covers, as if she was petting Lou Moussou. She didn’t know what else to do or to say. She saw that tears were slipping down Sabine’s cheeks. They sat silently for a while, then Suzie said, ‘How did it happen? You didn’t have to go back to school, did you?’

Sabine shook her head. She had stopped crying. Suzie thought that she was not going to reply, but at last she said, ‘After Christmas, he came to find me and asked about my lessons, who was teaching me.’

‘Who was?’

‘The aunts.’

‘And?’

‘He offered me some books for my classes. The aunts, of course, didn’t know about the proper courses or anything. They just taught what they liked. When I told him he made fun of what they were teaching me. But even more about her, what she taught us when you were here.’

Suzie said nothing. My enemy’s enemy is my friend. What had they been studying when Madame Ariane had produced that saying? Anyone who scorned her stepmother was Sabine’s friend. She would not stop to ask herself why.

‘He hated her, too.’

‘Why?’ Suzie asked, herself rather than Sabine. ‘Why does he hate Madame Ariane? Why do people hate me because I’m Jewish?’

Sabine ignored these questions as irrelevant, so Suzie asked, ‘What happened then?’

‘We went for walks. He wanted to know about Bonnemort.’

‘What about Bonnemort?’

‘All about when the Germans were here. He wanted to know about you, for example. He was surprised that you were Jewish. He thought you couldn’t be, because you stayed so long.’

‘What else?’

‘Oh, Henri. Henri was in the Resistance, but he wasn’t any good, so that’s why he got killed.’

‘Sabine,’ Suzie’s voice was shocked. ‘You hate Madame Ariane, so I can see why you let him talk like that about her. But you loved Henri. How could you let him say such things?’

‘I only listened,’ Sabine said defensively.

‘But you talked as well. That’s why he wanted to see you. He was finding things out from you. What did you tell him?’

‘I only told the truth.’

‘Sabine, it’s not whether it’s true or false, it’s who you tell it to. Don’t you remember …’

She was about to recall Madame Ariane’s words after their visit to Lavallade on the Fourteenth of July, but it was pointless to quote her to Sabine. How dangerous life with Sabine had been. Even more than she had realised at the time. Sabine might, on impulse, have told someone, anyone, about her being Jewish, at any time. But she hadn’t done so. She had held the gun, which Suzie had given her, to her head, but she had never pulled the trigger. In the instant of gratitude for that concealment, Suzie knew what Sabine had betrayed.