‘You mentioned Henri Menesplier …’

‘Yes, well, you know all about it from them in any case. Henri was arrested about the same time, but he was released, I don’t know how. Maybe your wife had something to do with it. She used to dine with the German officers, drink coffee with the chef de brigade of the Gendarmerie in Racines. She had influence.’

The blow went home. She saw it had and felt the easing of pain transferred to another.

‘You were there when Henri was shot?’

‘Yes. And we all thought we would be next. Especially when we had to dig graves. You want to know about Henri?’ For a moment her corroding bitterness ceased its work. ‘I don’t think he betrayed Lucien. I never thought that. He was a good man, Henri.’

In the late afternoon of 17 August 1944, everyone remembered that date now, it was etched in the town’s memory, a whole rowdy lot of the Maquis had come into town. She had refused to go out to see them, so she didn’t know what they were up to. They were thugs and hooligans, everyone knew that, the roughest youngsters, the least responsible men, probably foreigners, like that drunken Russian, Mr Nikola from Pechagrier. Then the shooting had started. The Germans or the Milice, the French paramilitaries who served alongside them, must have arrived. All she felt was irritation that there was no one to whom she could say, I told you so. She and the children were safe in the house and after a while things went quiet again. And that was the end of the danger for the day, or so she thought.

Later that evening, she had been making the children’s supper, when she heard the Germans coming back, the roar of their lorries, the shouting through a loud hailer, ‘Raus, raus.’ She ignored it, just as she had ignored the Maquis’ arrival earlier in the day, but a soldier came knocking at the door, waving his machine gun at her, grabbing one of the boys and pulling him out with him into the street. She had had no alternative but to take the other children and follow him and all the others who were being herded into the square.

Here her indignation evaporated, burned away by fear. For when they had been sorted with shouts and blows, men on one side by the Mairie, women on the other by the school, she saw that there were seven men, she could see their faces, tied up under guard in front of the oak tree. A soldier had taken a ladder and propped it against the huge trunk. He was almost hidden in the foliage, but his purpose was suddenly made apparent when a noose snaked down from the branch on which he was perched. That tumbling rope struck terror in them all and in silence they watched him secure five more ropes to different branches.

They were addressed by the major from Bonnemort. He spoke in German and he had a soldier translating who repeated what he said in very bad French. Five German soldiers had died that day, he said, because of the action of terrorists. Seven of the criminals had been captured and would pay with their lives. Their deaths were to be witnessed by the whole town, so that everyone would understand that the Germans still controlled France and would severely punish any disorder.