‘How can I?’ She was genuinely pleading now, regretting her display of annoyance. ‘My father lives in the occupied zone, in Paris; my grandparents are all dead; they came from Strasbourg, which, as you know, has been incorporated into the Reich. How can I possibly get this documentation?’

‘That is your business. I shall ask you to return in six weeks to see my colleague. An alternative, or supplementary, procedure is to submit yourself to examination by an agreed medical expert who will make a physical assessment of your racial type.’ He allowed his gaze to move slowly over her features: the straight dark brown hair, hazel eyes, Roman nose. ‘But you might not find that route to your advantage.’

On the train back to Bonnemort she shuddered with humiliation. It was a Frenchman, a representative of the French state, carrying out French law, who was demanding this. She did not even have the satisfaction of feeling that she was compelled by the Nazis. However, she had already accepted that, whatever the difficulties, she had to submit to proving what she wasn’t. She would write to her father at once. Her baptismal certificate, which she had never before had to present to anyone, being an item of no interest to a secular state, must be somewhere in his house. He must have his own baptismal and marriage papers, too. But her grandparents’ … If it were not so serious, it would be laughable. But she must prevent them from looking any closer at her household and asking questions more difficult to answer.

Theo listened to her account with sadness. In truth, he had no idea at all of the difficulties that she had faced all the years of his absence. Later, he questioned his father-in-law about this curious episode. Pascal Wolff had had the choice of appealing to the German authorities for the documents he needed about the marriage of his wife’s parents, or paying for false ones. After a lifetime of correct behaviour, he had deliberately chosen the course of illegality, procuring false papers to prove the truth of his parents-in-law’s marriage ceremony at the Protestant temple of Strasbourg in 1864. The enormous sum demanded for the forgery indicated the importance of such documents, for lack of them meant banishment from France and a one-way ticket to the East. If her father had not arranged matters, Ariane and Suzie too would have been on one of the trains from Drancy.

‘Do you have any idea who might have denounced you?’

‘Oh, I thought of everybody. The mayor, Gargaud, was a great supporter of Vichy and was always suspicious of us; Madame Maniotte, who detested me, because of my friendship with Lucien; even Vernhes.’

‘Vernhes? Why would he do such a thing?’

‘He and Henri didn’t get on. Henri was socialist, you remember, and there were often tensions. It was probably none of these. But you lived with fear and suspicion all the time, even of the people closest to you. What do you think you could do for Suzie?’