‘Now it is time for you to talk to Sabine.’ Aunt Odette was searching for her cane. Sabine had been sitting on a stool, huddled close to the fire. She had pulled forward a lock of her hair, running it through her fingers abstractedly as she listened to the wireless. It was hard to tell if she had paid any attention.

‘Oh no, Aunts, please stay.’

‘There’s no need to go.’ Theo was as reluctant as Sabine to be left, for he could think of nothing to say to his daughter. Between his experience and hers was a gulf he had not the imagination to bridge.

‘You’ve grown so much,’ he said. ‘I hardly recognise you.’

‘Yes.’

‘What … What …’ He was about to say, What have you been doing, but could see that this had too wide a scope. ‘What are you studying now?’

There was no reply.

Aunt Marguerite said, ‘Theo, you always reach the heart of a problem with uncanny understanding.’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘I am studying English,’ Sabine said. ‘I listen to the BBC and I read Dickens with Aunt Odette.’

‘Schooling is a problem, Theo,’ Aunt Marguerite answered him. ‘And we were awaiting your arrival to settle the question of what to do for Sabine’s education now.’

‘When she first came here in 1940 she went to the village school, which was very difficult in the winters.’

‘When Suzie came to us in forty-two, Ariane removed Sabine from the school, saying that she did not think the teacher, Mr Vernhes, was satisfactory. I think she was right.’

‘So what did you do for their education?’

‘Ariane taught the girls herself. She has a doctorate, after all.’

‘And you did too, Aunts,’ Sabine insisted.

‘Yes, even Odette and I took part, if Ariane was busy.’

‘You could do everything, Aunts. We really didn’t need her.’

‘Very flattering of you to say so, my dear, but not truthful.’

‘And since Ariane’s return to Paris,’ he referred to her absence without hesitation, ‘you have continued with her studies?’

‘We do mathematics, French, literature, history, geography, Latin, English, philosophy …’ Sabine recited.

‘An impressive programme.’

‘Less impressive than it sounds, I assure you, and not adequate for Sabine’s needs.’

‘The convent …’ Theo began.

‘No,’ Sabine shouted, leaping up from her stool. ‘I won’t go back to the convent. I won’t. I’ll run away.’ She suited her actions to her words by covering her face with one hand and rushing out of the room, knocking over a small table on the way.

‘You look shocked, Theo,’ Aunt Odette said drily. ‘Marguerite and I have learned about the upbringing of young girls in the last few years.’

‘Much more vexatious than boys.’

‘The convent?’ Theo repeated.

He had found the convent boarding school for Sabine when his wife died. He could not care for a child of six himself, so the nuns were the obvious answer.

‘You could insist. She may come round to the idea.’

‘She misses Suzie and Ariane. She needs companions. She should go back to the sisters.’