‘It sounds like a big commutation: community service rather than the death penalty.’

‘Yes, it was. But community service was probably more appropriate. I had already rejected the death penalty in principle.’

When she wrote her account of the war years, in her attempt to exorcise the past, she had ended with the sound of Vernhes’ footsteps on the rocky floor of the winepress. She remembered crouching in the loft with the hook of the pulley pulled against her chest, poised to act and to kill. She had listened to him moving in the darkness, calling Sabine’s name; then she heard him opening the door, leaving. Each moment she had told herself that she could do it now, release the pendulum to strike him down, while all the time she knew she would not.

Sabine put down her coffee cup. ‘I’m hopeless,’ she said. ‘We haven’t found a single memory in common. I beginning to feel that I’m an impostor who wasn’t living at Bonnemort and you were the genuine resident. There must be something we can both remember.’

Rachel was recalling the pages of the exercise book. She could visualise her own large European handwriting, the French in which she had written. There must be something that she could use to make Sabine acknowledge what they had done.

‘Lou Moussou,’ she said abruptly. ‘Surely you remember Lou Moussou.’

‘Of course I remember Lou Moussou. There was always a Lou Moussou at Bonnemort. He lived in a sty out of sight, beyond the farmyard.’

‘Because he was hidden from the authorities.’

‘I used to go and sit with him and talk to him.’

‘He was the first person you took me to meet when I arrived at Bonnemort.’

‘He was one of those pink pigs, who looked like a huge naked baby …’

‘And he had such an intelligent face …’

‘And every day we used to take his bucket of pigswill down to him, carrying it between us …’

‘And the pig-killers came …’

‘He was stunned with a blow to his head. We used the pulley in the winepress …’

‘His throat was cut with a knife …’

‘Yes, I remember that.’

First published in the United Kingdom in 2000 by Hodder and Stoughton

This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by

Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
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Copyright © Elizabeth Ironside, 2000

The moral right of Elizabeth Ironside to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781788630269

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.