‘Have we any ham? As an alsacien, he would do anything for a ham.’

‘No,’ said Micheline, sharply. ‘There’s no ham.’

‘Micheline, it’s for Henri.’

‘I’d give my soul for Henri,’ said Micheline, ‘and it’d do more good than that lot. It’s wrong to do business with these types and it’s stupid, too. You’ll see. He’ll take everything and keep Henri. I’ll give you a dried sausage.’

‘It’s worth trying,’ Ariane insisted. And it wasn’t just food she was trying.

She took out a suit that she had not worn for a year, at least since she went to Clermont to find Suzie, and tried it on. Florence looked at it doubtfully.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’ She folded up two handkerchiefs and handed them to Ariane. ‘Stuff those in your bust. Let’s hope he never gets close enough to discover the trick. I’ll take the hem up too, to make it look more up to date.’

Wilder was a small man, smaller than she, and obese. His face was swollen with fat, so that his eyes receded into slits. Short, sandy hair contrasted unpleasantly with his unnaturally dark red complexion. In spite of his gross belly, he rose nimbly as she entered. She listened to his accent as he greeted her and did her best to imitate the slight twang to his French. Yes, she too was from Alsace, at least her family was, and she intended to make the connexion work, along with any other that seemed promising.

Afterwards she found she had enjoyed the interview. She played her part with verve, flirting with him, emphasising every feminine gesture, every expression of eye and mouth.

She was distraught, she told him. She was a war widow, living on her property, alone and helpless, and her farm manager had been picked up in the village bar by his gendarmes. He was, of course, totally innocent. A solid family man in his fifties, who had lived in the country all his life. How could he be a terrorist or a communist?

He responded instinctively, like a dog circling a bitch on heat, prolonging the meeting with questions about the farm, to which she answered charmingly. She watched him dispassionately, and asked herself, if it came to sleeping with him, could she do it? She realised, with a shock, that what would stop her was not the significance of the act, but the fact that he was physically repulsive. She tried to imagine him naked, grotesquely white, patched with reddish hair, genitals hanging heavily, pink, tripe-like tubes escaping from his gut, and was revolted. But she knew that her objections, aesthetic not moral, were meaningless. She would if she had to.

She stayed until he reluctantly gave the signal that he must attend to more important matters. She recalled him timidly to the purpose of her visit, ‘My farm manager … You’re going to give him back to me?’ She might have been asking for a chocolate, or a kiss.