Her analyst had said, ‘You will have to acknowledge what happened before it will go away.’ But she had not told him; she had written it down and it had been fixed in the word. She began to feel desperate at Sabine’s refusal to recognise the past. Remembering had caused her much suffering, but it was better than pretending. She paused. ‘Henri,’ she said. ‘You must remember Henri.’

‘I remember the name, but I can’t picture him. He was Micheline’s husband who was shot by the Germans, I know that. I just don’t remember him as a person.’

Rachel sighed and picked up her glass of white wine. ‘What became of you all? Micheline, Florence?’

‘Micheline lived at Bonnemort until her death. One of her sons, Georges, died in deportation, but the other, Roger, came back from the war and took over the land. It’s his son who farms it now. Florence married. My stepmother kept in touch with her to the end of her life. The aunts died soon after the war.’

‘And your parents?’

‘My father went into politics, for which he was not well suited. He was a minister several times in the fifties, when governments came and went all the time. As I said, I never got on with him very well and relations between us broke down completely when I married my first husband, the American. I was very left-wing in those days and my father, who was a Gaullist and very anti-American, used to regard my activities as having no purpose but to embarrass him. My stepmother was always angelic and supported me against him.’

‘Strange,’ said Rachel meditatively, more to herself than to Sabine. Was she lying, refusing to admit a memory which hammered at the doors of her mind? Or could you forget a killing? ‘You don’t remember the communist schoolmaster who used to beat you?’ she asked.

‘No, did he really? I do remember I was bullied at my convent when I was very little. I must have been so feeble. A terrible child called Antoinette used to play doctors and stick pins in me, but my stepmother rescued me from that hell when she married my father.’

‘Well, he did beat you. Once I wanted to kill him for what he did to you. Do you remember how he broke your arm?’

‘How sweet of you. I know my arm was broken when I was a child. Was it then?’

‘Yes. I made an elaborate plan to kill him, inside that cave, the winepress.’

‘And did you succeed?’ Sabine was laughing.

‘No, I didn’t. I relented and didn’t carry it out. I had every intention of doing it and, at the last moment, my will failed and I reprieved him.’

‘Would it have worked if you had done it?’

‘Oh yes, it would have worked. I knew that already. But he was punished in a way. I lured him there to see you. He had the disappointment and humiliation of finding no one there. I watched him from my hiding place.’