He was the centre of their attention, recounting his adventures, his flight, London and Algiers, life with the Big Man.

‘We suspected that you might be in London,’ remarked Aunt Odette, ‘although Ariane never told us. But we didn’t know until the Germans left.’

‘She wasn’t sad enough. She tried but she’s not an actress. Henri knew something. He was even worse at acting than Ariane.’

‘They were not so bad at hiding some things.’

What things? Her lover?

‘We used to listen to In Londres. The general speaks very well, better than Mr Churchill, we think.’

They had had enough of his four years of exile. He was back and life would go on.

‘Tell me about your war,’ he said. ‘I’ve told you mine.’ Tell me about Ariane and the German officer.

‘What’s war to two old women in the depths of the countryside? We followed everything on the wireless.’

‘We had our atlas.’ Aunt Marguerite rose to fetch the large volume kept on the table behind the sofa. It opened where a magnifying glass was wedged into the map of Eastern Europe, marked from Danzig to Galicia, from Leningrad to the Crimea, with lines crossing the continent.

‘What with the Balkans and North Africa and Hawaii and Singapore, world war has been good for our geography, hasn’t it, Sabine?’

‘It’s shocking to say it, but it didn’t make so much difference to us. We could see life getting harder for Henri and Micheline and Ariane. To run the farm without men or fuel or seeds or fertiliser, wasn’t easy. But for us …’

‘Marguerite’s donkeys became useful for the first time in their lives. That was one change.’

‘Yes. We go to mass in the donkey cart.’

‘But we’d never even seen a German until June when they moved in here.’

‘How many of them were there?’ Theo asked.

‘About fifty, I think Ariane said. There seemed to be so many of them.’

‘The officers took over the house and used the reception rooms as offices; the men used the storerooms down in the field.’

‘They were perfectly correct, you know,’ Aunt Odette continued. ‘Look at the house. You wouldn’t believe they had been here, would you? Really no damage at all.’

‘So strange that they behaved so well here, when you think how they acted elsewhere. They would kill innocent people in reprisals. Sometimes if they were out hunting the maquisards, they would just shoot a farmer in the fields in passing, for no reason at all. And women too.’

‘There was a reason, Odette. If you make violence indiscriminate, no one can ever feel safe. It helped us a lot that Ariane spoke German,’ Marguerite went on.

He hadn’t known she spoke German. More proof.

‘Yes, they didn’t speak French at all, even the officers.’

‘She means they weren’t people you’d expect to be officers.’

‘But here they behaved correctly,’ Odette repeated. Marguerite de Cazalle was reflecting that feelings are forgotten so quickly. Now that it was over, she could hardly recall the fear of those weeks when the Germans were with them, like living with an ill-trained dog whose reactions could not be predicted. Now they could give them credit for one thing, being correct.