She had said nothing to Sabine of what she planned. They had never mentioned the major’s death, even to one another, a silence reinforced by that of Micheline, Florence and Madame Ariane. She wondered whether Sabine would approve of what she was going to do, or whether she would resist, as she herself had tried to resist Sabine’s attack on Madame Ariane. But this was different, she told herself. Madame Ariane had been innocent, she had known it instinctively, but Monsieur Vernhes was guilty and the guilty should be punished.

Epilogue

1999

Chapter Thirty-eight

Two elderly women were sitting side by side in the large seats of the Concorde lounge at JFK airport. Apart from their proximity they showed no other sign of connexion. Among the finely shaded categories of old age, both could be placed within the range of the young elderly: their faces were marked by the events of years, but their movements were still energetic and decisive.

The air crackled with the announcement of a half-hour delay in boarding. One of them, wearing a trouser suit, rose irritably when the speaker had finished and walked away, leaving her silk raincoat in her place. As she stood up, her passport and boarding card fell to the ground and lay unheeded under her seat.

Her neighbour watched her placidly, without stirring. Half an hour here or there made no difference to her. She made a quick social assessment of the impatient one: a Frenchwoman by her appearance. The plane, when it eventually took off, was bound for Paris, and this woman with her elegant suit and thick, crinkly dark hair, badger-striped at the temples, was unmistakably European. The seated woman’s eye caught sight of the passport, its pages fanned out, the boarding pass slotted within. She leaned down to retrieve them, and read the name on the boarding pass: de Cazaller, S.

She felt a blow in her chest as if someone had punched her, not hard, just enough to stop her breath and leave her gasping. She concentrated on steadying her breathing, telling herself that she had had a check-up only two weeks ago and her doctor had given her a clean bill of health. Apart from her blood pressure, she was fine, fine. She kept her eyes closed for a minute, counting the seconds, until the world settled down. When she opened them again, she saw that her neighbour was at the far end of the lounge, idly choosing a magazine from a rack. Rapidly and furtively she rifled through the passport, seeking the personal details. Sabine de Cazalle.

She would never have guessed. Nothing in the woman’s appearance would have recalled the past, as her name had just done so violently. Why should it? It was now more than fifty years since they had seen one another. The cells of their bodies had grown and renewed and died; they had lost vitality and elasticity; they had thickened and hardened and changed. They were no longer the people who had last seen one another as children in 1946.