‘You hated her.’

‘I did not.’ The denial was immediate, indignant. For the first time Sabine de Cazalle showed emotion.

They both awkwardly sipped their champagne to dissipate the sharpness of the contradiction. Had Sabine really forgotten, Rachel asked herself. Had she been successful in erasing the memory, inscribing over the palimpsest the story of an innocent war in a remote house in the depths of the countryside? Afterwards, when she and Sabine were still together, before she had left for America, they had never spoken of what had happened, but each was aware, of the other and of their complicity. When the memory became overwhelming, Rachel had cried, and everyone thought she wept for the loss of her parents. Sometimes, when Madame Ariane comforted her, she thought that she knew and understood.

‘What happened to you after you left us?’ Sabine asked.

‘I came to America to be adopted by some New York cousins. I went to college in America, Vassar. I married and I’ve lived in New York all my life since. My husband died two years ago. I have two sons and two daughters, all married, and twelve grandchildren. So I became American. Yet…’ She broke into French. ‘French is my language. I spoke French to all my children. My youngest daughter is married to a Frenchman. I’m on my way to visit them now. In some way, France is my refuge and ideal country. I never forget that I was saved in France, by the French. We were German by origin, you see. I never was really French myself; I just feel I should have been.’ She paused, thinking over the recital of her life with some satisfaction. The children and the grandchildren, their existence vindicated something. ‘And you?’ she asked.

Sabine put down her empty glass carefully. ‘I wish I could encapsulate my life so well. I’ve been married twice and divorced twice, once to – and from – an American, which is why I speak English. But that was a long time ago. I’m a photographer, still working to keep myself and to keep myself busy. No children. I adopted a Vietnamese child in the sixties and she now owns Bonnemort.’

‘And you really don’t remember those years, forty-two to forty-six, when I lived with you?’

‘What was there to remember? Life was so unexciting.’

The steward was laying cloths in front of them, arranging cutlery, handing out menus. Rachel fussed with the place setting. Her fingers were encircled with several diamond eternity rings, set with extravagantly large stones.

‘I spent a long time in analysis,’ Rachel said. ‘When I was about forty, I suddenly felt I had a lot to straighten out in my head, a lot of guilt and grief. I remembered everything then. My analyst told me to write it all down and I did. I wrote it all by hand in an exercise book. Those were the days before personal computers. Then I locked it up in a bank safe. One day my sons will open it up and learn about the past. The odd thing is that once I’d done it, the nightmares went away and I now only remember what I wrote down, in the words that I used in that exercise book.’