‘Ariane, I didn’t really think …’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

‘No, you were right to think what you did. I had to make accommodations. We all did.’

‘Ariane, this flat. I want us to move back in here, to start again.’

She made no reply.

‘And there’s Sabine. I can’t leave her with the aunts indefinitely.’

‘I can see that, yes.’ She slipped away from him, out from under the covers, stooping over her discarded clothes.

‘I feel it is unfair to send her back to the convent, and it seems wrong for Suzie to be in Paris and not Sabine. If we move here we could have both of them with us.’

She was leaning one foot on the end of the bed, rolling up a thick woollen stocking, fastening it to her suspenders. ‘But I don’t know when we can move in here. And I don’t think Sabine and Suzie should be together.’

‘Why not? Don’t they get on? I thought they used to be devoted to one another.’

‘They were.’ It was impossible to explain to him what had happened. ‘But at the end, when the Germans were with us, they were … I can’t explain. It was a sort of folie a deux of two pre-adolescent girls.’ She was fully dressed now, powdering her cheeks in front of the huge mirror over the fireplace, about to leave. ‘I’m not ready for this, Theo.’

Part Three

Bonnemort

6 June – 18 August 1944

Chapter Fifteen

The Germans arrived at Bonnemort on 6 June 1944, just before lunch. Micheline was in the kitchen, stoking the range; Florence was in the garden to pull up some leeks; the aunts were in their room with the wireless on; Madame Ariane and the children were in the schoolroom for a lesson in Latin. They were studying The Conquest of Gaul. Everyone had been expecting an invasion for days, French and Germans alike. Marshal Petain had already warned them that morning of what was happening.

Frenchmen, the German and Anglo-Saxon armies are engaged on our soil. France has thus become a battleground.

‘At long last.’

‘After four years.’ The old women were in the habit of talking as much to the wireless as to one another.

The circumstances of battle could lead the German army to take special dispositions in the zones of combat. Accept this necessity. I make this recommendation to you in the interests of your safety.

‘Listen.’ Sabine cocked her head like a dog.

Out of the open window they could hear the tolling of a bell carrying over the hills from the village. The cure had heard the news too. Pealing or tolling, a celebration or a tocsin, you could take it as you pleased. They returned to their routine, in spite of Sabine’s pleading for a holiday. Madame Ariane had chosen the chapter, ‘The Fight on the Atlantic Coast’.

‘With the completion of these operations,’ Sabine was translating, holding a ruler under the words, ‘Caesar had every reason to think that Gaul was pacified…’