The meal was like a memory of childhood, food that he had dreamed of in Blitz-darkened London. In the centre of the table, covered with a coarse linen cloth, was an ancient tureen, the porcelain scattered with flowers. Micheline lifted its chipped lid and said ceremoniously, ‘Le tourain.’

The smell of garlic and goose fat that was released as she ladled the soup into their bowls almost brought tears to Theo’s eyes. He and Henri used to have it in the early morning before they left to go shooting, or in the evening on their return from the fields. Micheline and Florence bent low over their bowls. Aunt Odette was eating with aristocratic slowness; Aunt Marguerite pursed her mouth, critically.

‘It lacks salt,’ she remarked.

‘It would,’ Micheline replied without taking offence. ‘Not enough bacon, so I added salt to compensate. But you’re right. Not enough.’

Sabine was playing with her soup, lifting a spoonful to her mouth and returning it untouched, to the bowl. She rose quickly to help Micheline, removing her own bowl and surreptitiously tipping the contents into the pig’s pot. The next course, produced to acclamation, was a round of foie gras with a black truffle as its hub.

‘Micheline, you’re a creator of miracles. I never thought I would see foie gras again,’ Theo said.

Micheline looked pleased. ‘I made these foie gras in the autumn of either thirty-eight or thirty-nine, I forget which. You said you must always face war with a full cellar and a full store. So I made foie gras and confits. I bottled vegetables and fruit. I made jam. And I hid a few for when the war was over.’

‘You’ve eaten all the rest? You must have had a good war here.’

The instant the words were spoken, he wished he could have caught them in the air, shot them down and destroyed them. A good war: Henri dead, Georges a forced labourer in Germany, Roger and Claude volunteers in the Alsace-Lorraine brigade, now fighting with the First Army. Fortunately, Micheline’s mind was a literal one; she only thought of her food reserves.

‘I lost a whole lot at once. We didn’t realise that the Requisition would take everything. They marked every beast, they counted every chicken. And last summer almost finished us off. We had the Maquis to feed and young men don’t live on nothing, I can tell you. Not that I gave them my foie gras truffe.’

She was handing round a white platter, on which a pile of bottled green beans was surrounded by the legs of preserved duck in their crusted skins. Sabine took a few beans. Micheline seized her fork and transferred a piece of duck to the child’s plate. Sabine made an expression of distaste, but said nothing.

After dinner the family walked back to the library, leaving Micheline and Florence in their own kitchen. They sat together and listened to the news, which was a sacred part of the aunts’ day.