‘You too?’

‘Yes, even me. I can dismantle a Bren with the best of them.’

‘But you were legal, not in hiding. What were you doing?’

‘Messages, mostly, by bike. Things got very bad here once the Germans came. It was very risky. I used to ride miles, me one night and Madame the next. There was a curfew, but in the darkness you could always hear them coming. And the little roads were in our hands. They didn’t dare use them.’

He hoped she would go on. He couldn’t bring himself ask her directly about Ariane, he could only hope that she would say something more. Instead, she rose and said, ‘So, goodnight.’

He saw his last chance and stood up too, putting his arms around her shoulders. ‘What happened here?’ he asked urgently. ‘I need you to tell me. No one else will.’

She turned away. ‘You mean Madame?’ she asked evasively.

‘No one will ever say. You can ask anyone you like and no one will tell you. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I didn’t see; I didn’t ask. But I think I know why.’

‘Yes?’ he prompted her, drawing her down again beside the fire.

They’d been out together one afternoon in late June, she and Madame Ariane, a few weeks after the Germans had arrived, and were returning home. It had been a hot day; they still had a long way to go, at least fifteen kilometres, when the chain of her bicycle slipped off. She put her bike in the grass and the two of them were working on it when they heard the sound of vehicles, big ones. They looked at one another and Madame had closed her eyes and sighed. Florence knew how she felt. She was tired and couldn’t be bothered to take the bikes into the forest to wait for them to pass. They had nothing to hide on them, so they’d take no notice.

Two German vehicles, one a car and the other a truck with soldiers in the back, passed them and stopped. As soon as they saw the car, they knew who it was. The major had commandeered Madame Ariane’s own car, the Hispano-Suiza that she had arrived in at the beginning of the war, and he drove around the countryside in it. That didn’t do Madame any good.

The lieutenant, the one with the eyepatch, jumped down from the truck and came towards them, speaking in German, smiling, friendly. He was gesturing towards the lorry and she could guess that he was offering them a lift home. Madame did not smile. She stood up and replied in German, shaking her head, bowing a little. He was insisting; she was refusing. He shouted to the soldiers in the truck and two young lads climbed down, seized the bikes and loaded them into the back.

Madame was furious. She walked away along the road. Florence ran after her. The vehicles came slowly behind them, stopped again and more or less forced them in, her into the cab of the truck, Madame into the car, also in the front, between the driver and the officer. Florence wasn’t fussed; she was glad of the lift home. Then she saw the way they were going. They didn’t take the little road that cuts directly to the crossroads by the Bonnemort track; they were going round through the village.